We explain who the Brothers Grimm were, how they compiled their stories and what their importance is in the emergence of the study of folklore.
The Brothers Grimm were two well-known German folklorists and linguists of the 19th century.
Who were the Brothers Grimm?
The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were two important German philologists and scholars of folklore, responsible for compiling and publishing during the 19th century one of the best-known collections of traditional European oral tales: Tales from childhood and home (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), from which most modern fairy tales come.
This anthology of around 200 stories collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815, has been immensely celebrated throughout history. In fact, It was translated into more than 100 languages and adapted numerous times for film and animation.especially by the popular American animation company founded by Walt Disney (1901-1966).
However, this volume It is not the only contribution of the Grimm brothers to Western culture.: They also built a method of collecting and analyzing popular stories that was key to studies in the area, and they also published an immense number of linguistic and literary studies. Thus They are considered the fathers of Germanic philology..
Birth and education of the Grimm brothers
The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm They were born in Hanau, in the province of Hesse.on 4 January 1785 and 24 February 1786 respectively. They were the first of five offspring of the lawyer Phillip Grimm and his wife Dorothea. The short age difference between Jacob and Wilhelm allowed them to have a very close and affectionate relationship that lasted a lifetime.
They grew up in the context of a bourgeois family, but their childhood was not without difficulties.His father, a civil servant in the town of Hanau, was transferred to Steinau, another town in the region. There, in 1796, Phillip died, leaving his family in financial difficulties.
Even so, The Grimm brothers demonstrated their talent and academic vocation. Their studies began in the secondary schools of the city of Kassel, where they moved with their mother, and continued at the University of Marburg, where they both entered with the purpose of following in their father’s footsteps and studying law.
In Marburg they not only completed their studies, but also came into contact with the poet and playwright Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) and the jurist and historian Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779-1861). From both of them they learned, respectively, the romantic passion for popular culture and a method of textual research. which would be key in their later work with folklore. Even so, rather than being romantic, the Grimms always retained a realistic mentality ahead of their time.
In 1805, before completing his studies, Jacob had the opportunity to go to Paris with Savigny and devote himself to the study of different medieval manuscripts. Thanks to this, he was able to participate, together with his brother, in a first commission for the search and compilation of popular poetry, requested by Brentano in 1806This experience would be of great professional value to both of them.
That same year, Napoleonic troops invaded Germany. A context of important political and cultural changes was thus imposed, which coincided with the death in 1808 of the Grimms’ mother., Dorotea. At just 23 years old, young Jacob became the family’s guardian and provider.
The collaboration of the Grimm brothers in the project of Clemens Brentano and his colleague Achim von Arnim (1781-1831) allowed the latter to publish between 1806 and 1808 the three volumes of The magic horn of youth (The Wunderhorn (Des Knaben): a compilation of German folk songs and poems. This anthology later inspired numerous German classical composers (such as Mendelsohn, Brahms, Schumann and Mahler) and was an important precursor to the work of the Brothers Grimm.
The beginning of a vocation
Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812) was the first publication of the Grimm brothers, which brought together 86 tales taken from the German folk tradition.
The years of Napoleonic rule of Germany brought changes for the Grimm family.. Initially, Jacob obtained employment in 1808 as private librarian to Jerome Bonaparte (1807-1813), king of Westphalia and brother of the French Emperor, and the following year he was hired as auditor of the imperial Council of State, a position he held until the Napoleonic defeat in 1813.
Wilhelm, for his part, upon completing his studies He returned home in 1808, a victim of asthma and a heart condition.Because of this, he was unable to find a stable job until 1814. In addition, in 1809 he underwent a series of medical treatments to improve his condition, for which he had to temporarily move to the German city of Halle.
The Battle of Leipzig in 1813 marked the beginning of the withdrawal of French forces from Germany. and the emergence of a new national and international order. Jacob found employment in the Legation Secretariat, negotiating the return of looted works of art from the German provinces of Hesse and Prussia, and the following year took part in the Congress of Vienna (1814–15). Wilhelm, meanwhile, obtained employment in the Library of the Electorate of Hesse. His brother joined him there in 1816.
The return to normality confirmed to the Brothers Grimm that their interest in law was a matter of the past. From then on his work focused exclusively on the world of books and culture.Encouraged by their friends Brentano and von Arnim, they undertook a compilation of popular stories that initially aimed to bring together tales not only from Germany, but also from Spain, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Finland, Holland and even Serbia.
For the Brothers Grimm, these types of stories represented true human and universal stories., capable of expressing the deep values of European culture. But, despite this, the Brothers Grimm’s approach to these tales distanced itself from the beautifying romantic view and assumed, instead, the commitment to give them definitive form without altering their values and popular essence. His was, seen this way, an aspiration scientific to folklore.
Tales of childhood and home
In their search for traditional stories, the Brothers Grimm consulted numerous narrators and storytellers, including the famous Dorothea Viehmann (1755-1816).
The first edition of the Tales of childhood and home by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812 and contained 86 stories, coming from the German and European tradition. In 1815 they published the second volume, which added 70 new stories to the project, coming from different German narrators and storytellers, especially Dorothea Viehmann (1755-1816), a well-known narrator of traditional stories, as well as from previous editions by Charles Perrault (1628 -1703), and by Johann Karl August Musäus (1735-1787) and Benedikte Naubert (1752-1819).
In 1816, the Grimm brothers They devoted themselves to a new project of strictly German stories and legends entitled German legends (Deutsche Sagen)which was completed in 1818 but was not so successful. And, from then on, to a second (1818) and third (1822) edition of his Tales from childhood and home (KHM, for its acronym in German), in which they corrected and increased the compendium to reach 170 stories in total.
Later there were new editions in 1837, 1840, 1843, 1850 and 1857, and Throughout this journey, pieces were added and removed, to finally reach 210 fairy tales in total.. All editions were always illustrated, initially by Johann Philipp Groot and later by Robert Leinweber.
The reception of the first editions of KHM was positive, although there was no shortage of criticism and observations due to the violent nature of the stories (especially regarding the punishment of villains) and also certain sexual innuendos considered inappropriate at the time for children. .
That is why, in successive reissues and versions, The tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm have been altered and softened, to make them more in line with contemporary sensibilities.. Thus, for example, in 1825 appeared small edition (Small ausgabe)a third compendium of 50 fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm adapted for a children’s audience. This third volume was so successful that between the year of its appearance and 1858 there were ten successive editions..
The Göttingen Seven
He Dictionary of the German language (Deutsches wörterbuch) was an unfinished project that the Grimm brothers worked on from 1838. The first edition was completed in 1961.
When the opportunities for the Brothers Grimm came to an end in Kassel, they decided to move to the city of Göttingen, belonging to the German kingdom of Hanover, where they found employment as librarians and later as professors. Many of his greatest contributions to Germanic culture and language come from this period..
Such is the case of Dictionary of the German language (Deutsches wörterbuch) which they began working on in 1838 and published their first volume in 1854. This is the first and most important dictionary of the German language, whose thirty-two volumes were completed only in 1961.more than a century after the Brothers Grimm started the project.
Jacob also made great contributions to the world of Germanic philology, such as his German grammar (German Grammar)the first known study of the historical development of the Germanic languages. Written between 1819 and 1837, this essay formulated the laws of sound change in different languages (both for vowels and consonants), and laid the foundations for a scientific etymology and what later became known as Grimm’s Law.
These publications were of great importance for the linguistic study of Germanic, Latin and Slavic languages.They were supplemented by translations of the Serbian grammar of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864), a scholar and friend of Jacob, and later by a study on the ancient practices, laws and beliefs of the Germanic people that Jacob published in 1828 under the title Antiquities of Germanic law (Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer).
In Germanic linguistics, a phenomenon of linguistic transformation that took place in the history of the Germanic and Armenian languages, around the 1st century BC, is known as “Grimm’s Law” (or First Consonantal Mutation of Germanic). C. This phenomenon consisted of the transformation of certain sounds inherited from the Indo-European language (voiced and voiceless plosive phonemes), in such a way that they continued to be articulated at the same point in the mouth, but in an entirely different way.
Wilhelm, for his part, devoted himself to the study of the European literary tradition. during his years in Göttingen. He published books on Danish epic poems and heroic legends…