About Jacob Grimm
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was born January 4, 1785, to Philipp and Dorothea Grimm, in Hanau, Germany. He was the eldest of nine children, eight boys and a girl. Young Jacob was especially close to his brother Wilhelm, who was just one year younger. The boys attended a school for classical education.
Their father, a lawyer, died from pneumonia when Jacob was only 11 years old. Determined to have her sons continue their education, their mother sent them to her home town of Kassel to live with their aunt, who served as a lady-in-waiting for the princess of Hessia-Kassel. Although they attended the best schools, only the elite were allowed to attend university. Being sons of a poor widow, the boys hopes of following their father’s footsteps and studying law were dashed.
When they graduated at the head of their respective classes, their aunt appealed to the mercy of the princess, who enabled Jacob to attend Marburg University in 1802. Wilhelm joined him there the next year. They began working on their collection of fairy tales as they continued their education.
In 1808, their mother died, and Jacob suddenly became responsible to support his younger siblings. He returned to Kassel and took a position as a librarian. Wilhelm soon joined him there. The family lived in stark poverty. Of their circumstances, Wilhelm once wrote, “We five people eat only three portions and only once a day.”
Their librarian jobs granted the brothers ample time to research the stories they had begun collecting. In 1825, Wilhelm married a young woman whose family became involved in the brothers’ search for stories. The family interviewed people and gathered as many stories as they could find. Jacob and Wilhelm continued to research, write, edit, and publish the stories.
During the 1830s, a political upheaval and subsequent peasant revolt in Germany led to a major turn in the Grimm brothers’ lives. Jacob had been offered a position as head librarian and professor of old German literature in the city of Göttingen. Wilhelm also had become a professor. A new king ascended to the throne, and with the recent French Revolution, King Ernst August II determined to thwart the ideals of equality that had ruined the French aristocracy. He therefore dissolved the parliament, abolished the constitution, and demanded all state employers swear allegiance to his authority.
Seven men, including Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, stood in protest against the king’s tyranny. Forced to leave the area, they returned to a humble life back in Kassel. Several years later, after Germany suffered its own revolution, a new king offered the brothers research professorships in Berlin. They were both elected to the National Assembly.
After they retired from politics, they began work on a German etymological dictionary. Both brothers would not live to see that project to completion. Wilhelm died in 1859, and Jacob lived another four years after his brother’s death.
How did Jacob Grimm get the idea to collect, write, and edit the Grimms’ Fairy Tales?
One of their law professors made a statement that influenced the rest of Jacob’s life. Friedrich Carl von Savigny said, “The essence of law could be understood only by knowing ancient customs and language.” From that point forward, the Brothers Grimm began digging into the origins of German literature and culture.
In 1812, during their time in Kassel, the brothers published Kinder-und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales), their first collection of 86 folk tales. A second volume containing an additional 70 stories was published in 1815, with the title, Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
The stories weren’t originally intended for children, as many of the tales were dark and contained adult themes. When it was realized that children enjoyed the tales, more edits were done to make the stories suitable for children, including adding morals and teaching to the tales.
Over the next several decades, the brothers continued to collect, rewrite, and edit folklore. By 1857, seven editions of their works were published, totally over 580 stories.
Excerpt from Hansel and Gretel
Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife, what is to become of us. How are we to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves. I’ll tell you what, husband, answered the woman, early to-morrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest. There we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them. No, wife, said the man, I will not do that. How can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest. The wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces. O’ you fool, said she, then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our coffins, and she left him no peace until he consented. But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same, said the man.
You can read the rest of the story here: Hansel and Gretel
A collection of 209 tales collected, written, and edited by the Brothers Grimm can be found online here: Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Quotes by Jacob Grimm:
- “He who is too well off is always longing for something new.”
- “The true poet, is like a man who’s happy anywhere, in endless measure, if he’s allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set.”
- “Love is like death, it must come to us all, but to each his own unique way and time, sometimes it will be avoided, but never can it be cheated, and never will it be forgotten.”