1. The Brothers Grimm

2. Jakob Grimm  Born: January 4, 1785 in Hanau, Germany  Active man  Never married  Lived with his brother, Wilhelm, and his brother’s wife  Chief compiler of the fairytales  Died: September 20, 1863 in Berlin Germany

3. Wilhelm Grimm  Born: February 24, 1786 in Hanau, Germany  Sickly man  Married Henriette Dorothea Wild  Chief rewriter of the fairytales  Died: December 16, 1859 in Berlin, Germany

4. What did they do?  German scholars  Linguists (a person who studies languages)  Cultural researchers  Lexicographers (a person who compiles dictionaries)  Collected and published folklore during the 19 th century

5. The Brothers Grimm did not write the fairytales.  The stories existed long before the two men were born.  They were passed down from generation to generation orally, often by women to pass the time during household chores.  The Grimm brothers began a quest to save the stories from extinction.  They interviewed relatives and friends, collecting whatever tales they could.  In 1812, they published the stories as part of a collection titled Nursery and Household Tales, or what is now referred to as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

6. Most commonly retold fairytales  The Frog King  Rapunzel  Hansel and Gretel  Cinderella  Little Red Cap (aka Little Red Riding Hood)  Snow White  Rumpelstiltskin  The Turnip

7. The stories were not intended for kids.  The stories routinely included sex, violence, child abuse, and other remarkably dark elements. For example, in their original versions:  Rapunzel gets pregnant by the prince after a casual fling which results in her hair being cut off by the witch,  Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to try to fit into the slipper, and  Snow White’s step mother dies after being forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes.  The stories did not have illustrations.  Many of the tales were eventually revised once the stories became popular among children.

8. Wicked mothers  Evil stepparents are common in fairy tales, but the Grimms originally included some evil biological mothers as well.  In the 1812 version of “Hansel and Gretel,” a wife persuades her husband to abandon their children in the woods because they don’t have enough food to feed them.  Snow White’s evil mother at first wishes for her and then becomes infuriated by her daughter’s beauty.  Both of these mothers were later changed to stepmothers in subsequent editions, and mothers have essentially remained off the hook ever since.

9. Jakob and Wilhelm faced deportation and bankruptcy.  In 1830, King Ernest Augustus demanded oaths of allegiance from all professors in Gottingen, a university city where Jakob and Wilhelm taught.  The brothers and five other professors refused to pledge to the king.  They were made to leave the city.  Jobless, they were forced to borrow money from friends as they worked on their story collection.

10. A publishing blockbuster  By the time Wilhelm died in 1859, Grimm’s Fairy Tales was in its 7 th edition.  The collection had grown to 211 stories.  It included intricate illustrations.  Some claim the collection has only been outsold by Shakespeare and the Bible.

11. More than just fairy tales  The brothers were University-trained philologists (the study of language in historical texts) and librarians.  They wrote books about mythology.  They published scholarly works on linguistics and medieval studies.  They worked on compiling a German dictionary, although both brothers died before they were able to finish the entry for the letter F.

12. Anti-Semitism  During the Third Reich, the Nazis adopted the Grimms’ tales for propaganda purposes.  They claimed that Little Red Riding Hood symbolized the German people suffering at the hands of the Jewish wolf.  They claimed that Cinderella’s Aryan purity distinguished her from her mongrel stepsisters.

13. 10 Facts about the Brothers Grimm

14. Little Red Cap – Audio Reading

15. Resources Greenspan, J. (2013, Sep. 17). The dark side of the Grimm fairy tales. History in the Headlines. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/news/the-dark-side-of- the-grimm-fairy-tales. Myint, B. (2014, Dec. 22). 5 facts about the brothers Grimm. History & Culture. Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/news/brothers-grimm-facts.