About the brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm are known around the world for the fairy tales which thanks to them were saved from oblivion and which - collected from the oral and sometimes also written tradition and put in one place - translated into over 160 languages – today still touch the hearts of not only the youngest. However, the main and the only activity of the Brothers Grimm was not only collecting fairy tales. They are scientists, teachers, and have made a great contribution to the study of the development of the German language. It is said: " The Brothers Grimm are not only collectors of fairy tales, they are philologists, and in fact the best in their time."
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are the two oldest of six children (of nine, but three died as infants) of Philip and Dorothea Grimm. They come from a family where grandfather and great grandfather were clerics in the Calvinistic church. Born in Hannau (1785/1786 - † 1863/1859 in Berlin), they move at the age of 5 - 6 years in Steinau an der Strasse where their father works as Amtmann. One part of their childhood they spend here. Two years after the death of their father, they move to their relative - aunt - in Kassel where they get under her care the best education. After graduation they study law, but their interests lean more towards the History and the German language: the development, changes in the development and similarities between related languages (their name is related to a law known in Linguistics and German Studies as Grimm’s Law). After their studies, they work as librarians what allows them uninterrupted friendship with books and work on their own interests, what gives reliable results, but the circumstances force them to leave that job and move to Göttingen where they work about seven years as professors at the University of Göttingen. During this period they become two of the seven professors from Göttingen (Göttinger Sieben) who lose their job and are persecuted because they protest against the decision of Ernst August II of Hanover to abolish the Constitution. After this, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV invites them to Berlin to work as professors at the Academy of science where they live and work till the end of their lives. During the period beginning with their dismissal in Göttingen until the end of their life they work on the Dictionary of the German language, but fail to complete it. The dictionary was finished in 1961, as their work had been continued by the following generations – brothers came only to the letter F.
Besides fairy-tailes (first edition 900 copies in 1812 ) they published also: essays on the Minnesang (together), on old German "Meistergesang" (Jacob), old Danish heroic songs, ballads and fairy tales (Wilhelm), three issues of the magazine Altdeutsche Wälder, Old german Song of Hildebrand, Wessobrunner Gebet (together), a book of mythological interpretation of images and pillars of gods (Jacob), old Spanisch romance, Collection of Legends (German heroic legends from 6-16 century, together with essays on the material, the origin, and the artistic processing), German grammar, German Dictionary etc.
