Jacob Grimm Biography and List of Works

Jacob and Wilhelm 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, which helped to establish the science of folklore. 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 selected and arranged the stories, while Jacob, who was more interested in language and philology, was responsible for the scholarly work.

"What a tender young creature! What a nice plump mouthful - she will be better to eat than the old woman."
(from 'Little Red-Cap')

Jacob Grimm was born in Hanau. His father, who was educated in law and served as a town clerk, died when Jacob 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. Jacob then studied law at Marburg. He worked from 1816 to 1829 as a librarian at Kasel, where his brother served as a secretary. 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).

The brothers moved to Göttingen in 1830, Wilhelm becoming assistant librarian and Jacob librarian. In 1835 Wilhelm was appointed professor, but King Ernest Augustus dismissed them two years later for protesting against the abrogation of the Hanover constitution. In 1841 they became professors at the University of Berlin, and worked with DEUTSCHES WÖRTERBUCH. 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. Jacob remained unmarried. Wilhelm died in Berlin on December 16, 1859 and Jacob four years later on September 20, 1863. He had just finished writing the dictionary definition for Frucht.

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. The 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 also became the model for other scholars. However, in practice the tales were modified, and in later editions of the fairytales Wilhelm's editing and literary aspiration were more prominent.

From his first book, ÜBER DEN ALTEDEUTSCHEN MEISTERGESANG (1811) Jacob Grimm supported the theory about the unique relationship between the 'original' German language and the folktales, whose origins were coeval with the origins of German culture.

While collaborating with Wilhelm Jakob turned to study of philology, producing the DEUTSCHE GRAMMATIK. Jakob's views on grammar influenced deeply the contemporary study of linguistics, Germanic, Romance, and Slavic. The work is in use even now. In 1822 Jacob devised the principle of consonantal shifts in pronunciation known as Grimm's Law. He illustrated the changes in Germanic by citing contrasting cognates in Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit.

In Jacob Grimm's DEUTSCHE MYTHOLOGIE fairy tales are traced in the pre-Christian era, in ancient faith and superstitions of the Germanic peoples. The archaic pre-medieval Germany was seen representing a Golden Age, a period of comparative harmony and happiness before it was lost. This romantic view of the history owed much to Bible's tale of Eden or perhaps also Arthurian legends.

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 has the wicked Queen 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. At the end of World War II, allied commanders banned the publication of the Grimm tales in Germany in the belief that they had contributed to Nazi savagery.

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 is 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.

For further reading: Grimm Brothers and the Germanic Past, ed. by Elmer H. Antonsen (1990); The Hard Facts of the Grimms' 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) - 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."

ÜBER DEN ALTEDEUTSCHEN MEISTERGESANG, (1811)