Fun Facts Friday: Wilhelm Grimm

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.

Books by Wilhelm Grimm

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