Wilhelm Karl Grimm, or the Grimm Brothers, was born today in 1786. The brothers are famous to this day and their name is practically synonymous with folk tales and fairytales.
1 ) Wilhelm Grimm was the younger of the two brothers.
2 ) Wilhelm studied law and married Henriette Dorothea Wild (Dotchen), a pharmacist’s daughter.
3 ) Visitors to the house, which Wilhelm and Jacob’s families shared, described his as an excellent storyteller and an “uncommonly animated, jovial fellow”.
4 ) The Grimm Brothers collected folk lyrics and published the collection as Children’s and Household Tales, later known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
5 ) Grimm’s Fairy Tales was published over a decade between 1812 and 1822 in several volumes.
6 ) The focus of the brothers was to reproduce oral tales as faithfully as they could, taking into consideration the techniques storytellers used.
7 ) The methods the brothers came up with were used to establish a scientific approach to documenting folklore.
8 ) Wilhelm Grimm continued to study German folklore and published a new edition of ancient tales.
9 ) King Frederick William IV of Prussia personally bestowed upon the brothers a membership of the Royal Academy of Science in 1840.
10) The brothers started work on a huge dictionary. Wilhelm died in 1859, the brother’s dictionary was on the letter “D”. Four years later, when Jacob died he was on the letter “F”.
Zohar – Man of la Book
3 Comments
Wow. I wonder if they died of boredom. (Writing a dictionary?)
LOL, I don’t know but it’s a good reason as any.
Well now. I can honestly say I knew…almost none of that. How curious! Could you imagine a Grimm Dictionary as opposed to Webster?