Brothers and World

The Brothers Grimm & German Fairy Tales

Course 1 · Chapter 3 · The Brothers and Their World

The tales were collected by two particular men at a particular moment: a time of war, occupation, political upheaval and anxious money. Knowing how the brothers grew up, where they worked and what they lived through helps explain what they collected, why they collected it and why the collection changed as it did. This chapter gives a short life of the brothers, set against the politics of their day. Dates, places and details are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Childhood and Education

Hanau and Steinau

Jacob (1785) and Wilhelm (1786) were born in Hanau in Hesse, where their father was a lawyer and official. The family later moved to nearby Steinau (check the dates and the father's post).

Loss and money

Their father died in 1796, and their mother, with several children, had less money from then on (check). The family depended on relatives, and Jacob took on much of the responsibility for his siblings.

School in Kassel

The brothers went to school in Kassel, supported by an aunt, and were good students although sometimes treated as outsiders because of their lower standing (check the details).

Marburg. Both studied law at the university in Marburg in the early 1800s, where Jacob and Wilhelm met Professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny, a leading figure in the historical study of law (check).
The turn to old texts. Savigny encouraged Jacob's interest in medieval manuscripts, and the brothers gradually moved from law towards language and literature (check how directly).
The friendship with the Romantics. Through Savigny they met Brentano and Arnim (Chapter 2) and came into contact with the Romantic circle (check).

Jobs and Years

Years (check each)	Place	What happened
1806 to 1813	Kassel	The Kingdom of Westphalia, set up under French influence, ruled the area. Jacob worked as a court librarian for a time, and the brothers began collecting tales.
1812 and 1815	Kassel	The two volumes of the first edition of the tales appear (Chapter 4).
1816 to 1829	Kassel	After the end of Napoleonic rule the brothers worked as librarians under the restored elector, with modest pay and time for study (check).
1830 to 1837	Göttingen	Both took posts at the university, Jacob as professor and librarian and Wilhelm first as librarian and then as professor (check).
1837 to 1840	Kassel	After the Göttingen Seven protest (Chapter 8) they lost their posts and returned to Kassel, living for some years on their writing and on help from friends.
1841 onward	Berlin	They were invited to Berlin by the Prussian king, where they worked on the dictionary and other projects until their deaths (check).

The World They Lived In

Napoleonic wars. French armies crossed the German lands from the 1790s, and the brothers lived under French-influenced rule in Kassel (check). That experience helps explain an interest in German language and culture as something worth preserving.
Political fragmentation. The old Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806, leaving many separate states and, after 1815, a loose German Confederation (check). Questions of German unity were central to the educated public.
The 1830s and 1840s. Debates over constitutions, censorship and liberty shaped university life and led to the Göttingen protest (Chapter 8).
1848. The brothers lived through the revolutions of 1848, and Jacob took part in the Frankfurt Parliament as a member (check the role and extent of their involvement).

Working together The brothers lived and worked together for most of their lives, and their writings often cannot be neatly divided. Even so, scholars generally credit Jacob with more of the linguistic and legal scholarship and Wilhelm with more of the editing and style of the tales (check how firmly this can be stated). A third brother, Ludwig Emil Grimm, was an artist who made portraits and illustrations (check).

A British comparison The brothers' world has a rough British parallel in the generation of Walter Scott and Robert Burns, who also collected older songs and tales in the shadow of upheaval and wars, and who were also tied to ideas of national tradition (check the comparison). One difference is that the Grimms' interest in the language shaped a long scholarly career as well as a famous book.

Check the details Specific dates, posts and salaries in a biography like this one are easily mis-remembered. Check them against a modern biography of the brothers or the museum in Kassel, and treat statements about their motives as interpretation, not fact.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Make a one-line summary of each decade of the brothers' lives from 1800 to 1860, naming the place and the main work.

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Exercise 2

Explain in a short paragraph how the Napoleonic wars might have shaped the Grimms' interest in German tales, and say what evidence would be needed to support the claim.

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Exercise 3

List three facts about the brothers' lives that you would check against a modern biography, and say why each is likely to be misremembered.

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Quick Reference

Origins: Hanau, Steinau, school in Kassel, law at Marburg (check)
Careers: Kassel librarians, Göttingen professors, then Berlin (check)
Key events: Napoleonic rule in Kassel, the Göttingen Seven in 1837, the revolutions of 1848 (check)
People: Savigny, Brentano, Arnim, and the brother Ludwig Emil Grimm (check)
The caution: motives such as "they collected tales to save German culture" are interpretations