What did the grimm brothers do
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Brothers Grimm
Brother duo of German academics and folklorists
For other uses, see Brothers Grimm (disambiguation).
The Brothers Grimm (German: die Brüder Grimm or die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of folktales, popularizing stories such as "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel"), "The Frog Prince" ("Der Froschkönig"), "Hansel and Gretel" ("Hänsel und Gretel"), "Town Musicians of Bremen" ("Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten"), "Little Red Riding Hood" ("Rotkäppchen"), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" ("Rumpelstilzchen"), "Sleeping Beauty" ("Dornröschen"), and "Snow White" ("Schneewittchen"). Their first collection of folktales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was first published in 1812.
The Brothers Grimm spent their formative years in the town of Hanau in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. Their father's death in 1796 (when Jacob was 11 and Wilhelm 10) caused great poverty for the family and a
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‘The Brothers Grimm: A Biography’ by Ann Schmiesing review
The Brothers Grimm, alongside the likes of the Wright brothers and the Marx brothers, are among the most recognisable sibling double-acts in history – but, as Ann Schmiesing notes in her new biography of the great German folklorists, few people are now able to name the brothers individually, or identify each’s achievements. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm have fallen victim to a kind of ‘genericide’: the universal fame of their work has killed their actual biographies (even if linguists still remember Jacob for Grimm’s Law). It is a problem intensified, for the Brothers Grimm, by the archetypal status their stories now occupy in the popular imagination. No one credits the Grimms as the authors of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ or ‘Hansel and Gretel’ in the way Shakespeare is lauded for his genius as a creator; the Grimms, in popular culture, were mere conduits for primordial tale-types. Yet there is no such thing as pristine folklore, or pure story; every telling comes from, and owes something to, the teller. Folklore, or the telli
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Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm (Die Brüder Grimm) are unique within the literary world. Despite their work being some of the most well-known on the planet, Jacob and Wilhem were not, strictly speaking, writers. They were librarians.
What, then, was so special about the dogged scholarly pursuits of Jacob and Wilhelm?
And why did the fruits of their research turn the brothers Grimm from unknown academics into literary superstars?
The brothers Grimm were born in Hanau, just east of Frankfurt, Germany – over the space of fourteen months. Jacob Ludwig Carl arrived on 4th January 1785, and was followed by Wilhelm Carl on 24th February 1786. In 1791, the Grimm family moved to the countryside town of Steinau, where, alongside a strict Calvinist instruction, the brothers developed a deep love of rural life.
The Brothers Grimm are unique within the literary world. They were librarians.
The brothers’ father died in 1796, plunging the Grimm family into financial hardship. When, two years later, Jacob and Wilhem moved to Kassel to attend the prestigious Friedrichs
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