Wilhelm Grimm Biography and List of Works

Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm - famous for their classical collections of folk songs and folktales, especially for KINDER- UND HAUSMÄRCHEN (Children's and Household Tales); generally known as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Stories such as 'Snow White' and 'Sleeping Beauty' have been retold countless times, but the Brothers Grimm first wrote them down. In their collaboration Wilhelm, who was the more imaginative and literary of the two, selected and arranged the stories, while Jacob was responsible for the scholarly work.

"Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here? Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you."
(from 'Hansel and Gretel')

Wilhelm Grimm was born in Hanau. His father, who was educated in law and served as a town clerk, died when Wilhelm was young. His mother Dorothea struggled to pay the education of the children. With financial help of Dorothea's sister, Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to Kasel to attend the Lyzeum.Wilhelm always suffered from poor health, which made regular work difficult. He was nonetheless more animated, jovial, and sociable than Jacob. After studying law at Marburg, he worked as a secretary at Kassel, where Jacob served as librarian. In 1812, the year their fairy tales were first published, the Grimm's were surviving on a single meal a day. Between 1821 and 1822 the brothers raised extra money by collecting three volumes of folktales. With these publications they wanted to show, that Germans shared a similar culture and advocate the unification process of the small independent kingdoms and principalities.

Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimm's. One of the most important informants was Marie Hassenpflug, a 20-year-old friend of their sister, Charlotte, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie's stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and Perrault's Tales of My Mother Goose (1697).

In 1829 the brothers moved to Göttingen, Wilhelm becoming assistant librarian and Jacob librarian. In 1835 Wilhelm was appointed professor, but they were dismissed two years later for protesting against the abrogation of the Hanover constitution by King Ernest Augustus. In 1840 the brothers accepted an invitation from the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to go to Berlin. There, as members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, they lectured at the university. In 1841 they became professors at the University of Berlin, and worked with their most ambitious enterprise, the DEUTSCHES WÖRTERBUCH, a large German dictionary. Its first volume appeared in 1854. The work, 16 volumes, was finished in the 1960s.

The Grimm's made major contributions in many fields, notably in the studies of heroic myth and the ancient religion and law. They worked very close, even after Wilhelm married in 1825 his childhood friend Dortchen Wild, who was a prominent source of fairy tales for their collection. Jacob remained unmarried. Wilhelm died of infection in Berlin on December 16, 1859, and Jacob four years later on September 20, 1863.

The Grimm's came over a century after Madame d'Aulnoy and Charles Perrault, who between them first created and popularised the literary fairy tale. Grimm's were more intent on capturing the genuine oral tradition - earlier Ludwig Tieck and Johann-Karl Musaeus relied more on the gothic tradition than folklore.

Kinder- und Hausmärchen was published in two volumes (1812-1815) - the final edition was published in 1857 and contained 211 tales; a further 28 had been dropped from earlier editions, making 239 in total. They had written down most of the tales from oral narrations, collecting the material mainly from peasants in Hesse. The first edition included stories in 10 dialects as well as High German. Among the best-known stories are "Hansel and Gretel," "Cinderella," "Rumpelstiltskin," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and "The Golden Goose." The stories include magic, communication between animals and men and moral values, teachings of social right and wrong.

The brothers are generally treated as a team, though Jacob concentrated on linguistic studies and Wilhelm was primarily a literary scholar. German Romanticism and its interest in mythology, folklore and dreams affected the brothers. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm argued that folktales should be collected from oral sources, which aimed at genuine reproduction of the original story. Their method became model for other scholars. However, in practice the tales were modified. In later editions of the fairytales Wilhelm's editing and literary aspiration were more prominent. He continued to reshape the tales up to the final edition of 1857 - he also removed any hint of sexual activity, such as the premarital couplings of Rapunzel and the prince who climbed into her tower. However, the cores of the stories were left untouched.

While collaborating with Jacob was Wilhelm's contribution to science is his collection DIE DEUTSCHE HELDENSAGE - The German Heroic Tale. In 1840 the Brothers Grimm began the Deutsches Wörterbuch, intended as a guide for the user of the written and spoken word as well as a scholarly reference work. Wilhelm's work proceeded to the letter D, Jacob lived to see the work proceed to the letter F.

Both brothers argued that folktales should be recorded and presented in print in a form as close as possible to the original mode. In practice they modified folktales in varying ways. In "The Snow White" the violence was removed in later editions: the original end of the story the wicked Queen is forced to put on red-hot iron slippers and dance till she dies. In "Hansel and Gretel" the witch ends up in the oven and is baked alive. In Nazi Germany Little red Riding Hood was turned into a symbol of the German people, saved from the evil Jewish wolf. In the 1970s the tales were scorned for promoting a sexists, authority-ridden worldview.

Leading German Romantics: J.W. Goethe, Novalis, Friedrich Schiller. - Note: In Finland Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), who created the Finnish national epic Kalevala, collected the material - ballads, lyrical songs and incantations - from oral sources as the Grimm's. - Poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) studied Irish legends and tales, which he published with George Russell and Douglas Hyde in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888). - Although Grimm's Fairy Tales are in fact much closer to genuine folk tales, the Brothers Grimm probably rival Hans Christian Andersen as the best-known tellers of fairy tales. Their stories have been utilized by many modern fantasists, including Tanith Lee, Robin McKinley, and Patricia Wrede.

Film: The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), dir. by Henry Levin, George Pal, starring Laurence Harvey, Karl Boehm, Claire Bloom, Barbara Eden - an account of the lives of the brothers, supplemented by three stories, "The Dancing Princess," "The Cobbler and the Elves," and "The Singing Bone."

For further reading: Grimm Brothers and the Germanic Past, ed. by Elmer H. Antonsen (1990); The Hard Facts of the Grimm's' Fairy Tales by Maria M. Tatar (1990); The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, ed. by James M. McGlathery (1991); The Brothers Grimm and Their Critics by Christa Kamenetsky (1992); Grimm's' Fairy Tales by James M. McGlathery (1993); The Reception of Grimm's' Fairy Tales, ed. by Donald Haase (1993)

Herman Grimm (1828-1901), the second son of Wilhelm Grimm, professor of the history of modern art at University of Berlin (from 1873), essayist, whose style of controlled improvisation influenced deeply the development of the genre in Germany. Herman Grimm dedicated his first collection, Essays (1859), to Ralph Waldo Emerson. His works were rediscovered in the 1940s.

ALTDÄNISCHE HELDENLIEDER, BALLADEN UND MÄRCHEN, (1811)