The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), were German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together specialised in collecting and publishing folklore during the 19th century. They were among the best-known storytellers of folk tales, and popularised stories such as Cinderella, The Frog Prince, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Rumplestiltskin, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Their first collection of folk tales, Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was published in 1812.
They brothers both attended the University of Marburg where they developed their first curiosity about German folklore, which grew into a lifelong dedication to collecting German folk tales. The rise of romanticism (a movement in the arts and literature which originated in the late 18th century, emphasising inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual) during the 19th century revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the brothers represented a pure form of national literature and culture. With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folk tales, they established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. Between 1812 and 1857, their first collection was revised and republished many times, growing from 86 stories to more than 200.
The brothers were directly influenced by Brentano and von Arnim, who edited and adapted the folk songs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn or cornucopia). The brothers began collecting folklore with the purpose of creating a scholarly treatise of traditional stories and of preserving the stories as they had been handed from generation to generation—a practice that was threatened by increased industrialisation. They collected and published tales as a reflection of German cultural identity. It is precisely the handing from generation to generation and the genesis in the oral tradition that gives folk tales an important mutability. Versions of tales differ from region to region, picking up bits and pieces of local culture and lore, drawing a turn of phrase from a song or another story and fleshing out characters with features taken from the audience witnessing their performance.
By 1810, they had produced a manuscript collection of several dozen tales, written after inviting storytellers to their home and transcribing what they heard. These tales were heavily modified in transcription, and many had roots in previously written sources. The brothers gained a reputation for collecting tales from peasants, although many tales came from middle-class or aristocratic acquaintances. The brothers’ goal of preserving and shaping the tales as something uniquely German at a time of French occupation was a form of “intellectual resistance” and, in so doing, they established a methodology for collecting and preserving folklore that set the model to be followed later by writers throughout Europe during periods of occupation.
The Grimms’ legacy contains legends, novellas, and folk stories, the vast majority of which were not intended as children’s tales. The brothers believed that the tales were of value and reflected inherent cultural qualities. The stories were didactic in nature at a time when discipline relied on fear, stories such as ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ were ‘warning tales’ for children. The Grimms’ version of “The Frog Prince” describes the princess throwing the frog against a wall instead of kissing him. To some extent, the cruelty and violence may have been a reflection of medieval culture from which the tales originated, such as scenes of witches burning, as described in “The Six Swans”.
As literary historians and scholars, the brothers delved into the origins of stories and attempted to retrieve them from the oral tradition without loss of the original traits of oral language. The brothers strongly believed that the dream of national unity and independence relied on a full knowledge of the cultural past that was reflected in folklore. They worked to discover and crystallise a kind of Germanness in the stories that they collected because they believed that folklore contained kernels of ancient mythologies and beliefs which were crucial to understanding the essence of German culture. By examining culture from a philological point of view, they sought to establish connections between German law and culture and local beliefs.
In their research, the brothers made a science of the study of folklore, generating a model of research that “launched general fieldwork in most European countries”, and setting standards for research and analysis of stories and legends that made them pioneers in the field of folklore in the 19th century.