Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (also Carl) and Wilhelm Karl Grimm were born on 4 January 1785, and 24 February 1786, respectively, in the Wolfgang section of Hanau, Germany near Frankfurt in Hessen. They were among a family of nine children, six of whom survived infancy. Their early childhood was spent in the countryside in what has been described as an "idyllic" state. The Grimm family lived near the magistrate's house between 1790 and 1796 while the father was employed by the Prince of Hessen.
When the eldest brother Jacob was fifteen years old, their father, Philip Wilhelm, died and the family moved into a cramped urban residence. Two years later, the children's grandfather also died, leaving their mother to struggle to support them in reduced circumstances. It has been argued that this is the reason behind the Brothers' tendency to idealize and excuse fathers, leaving a predominance of female villains in the tales...the infamous wicked stepmothers, for example, the evil stepmother and stepsisters in "Cinderella". However this opinion ignores the fact that the brothers were
collectors of folk tales, not their authors:
- "They urged fidelity to the spoken text, without embellishments, and though it has been shown that they did not always practice what they preached, the idealized 'orality' of their style was much closer to reality than the literary retellings previously thought necessary."
- "Scholars and psychiatrists have thrown a camouflaging net over the stories with their relentless, albeit fascinating, question of 'What does it mean?'"
Another influence is perhaps shown in the brothers' selection of stories such as
The Twelve Brothers, which show
one girl and
several brothers' (their own family structure) overcoming opposition.
The two brothers were educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kassel and later both studied law at the University of Marburg. There they were inspired by their professor Friedrich von Savigny, who awakened an interest in the past. They were in their early twenties when they began the linguistic and philological studies that would culminate in both Grimm's Law and their collected editions of fairy and folk tales. Though their collections of tales became immensely popular, they were essentially a by-product of the linguistic research, which was the Brothers' primary goal.
In 1808, Jacob was named court librarian to the King of Westphalia. In 1812 the Grimm brothers published their first volume of fairy tales,
Tales of Children and the Home. They had collected the stories from peasants and villagers, and, controversially, from other sources such as published works from other cultures and languages (e.g. Charles Perrault); they were also aided by their close friend August von Haxthausen. In their collaboration, Jacob did more of the research, while Wilhelm, more fragile, put it into literary form and provided the childlike style. They were also interested in folklore and primitive literature. In 1816 Jacob became librarian in Kassel, where Wilhelm was also employed. Between 1816 and 1818 they published two volumes of German legends and a volume of early literary history.
In time the brothers became interested in older languages and their relation to German. Jacob began to specialize in the history and structure of the German language. The relationships between words became known as Grimm's Law. They gathered immense amounts of data. In 1830, they formed a household in Göttingen, where both brothers secured positions at the University of Göttingen. Jacob was named professor and head librarian in 1830; Wilhelm became a professor in 1835.
In 1837, the Brothers Grimm joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to protest against the abolition of the liberal constitution of the state of Hanover by King Ernest Augustus I, a reactionary son of King George III. This group came to be known in the German states as
Die Göttinger Sieben (
The Göttingen Seven). The two, along with the five others, protested against the abrogation. The professors were fired from their university posts and three were deported, including Jacob. Jacob settled in Kassel, outside Ernest's realm, and Wilhelm joined him there; they both stayed with their brother Ludwig. However, the next year, the two were invited to Berlin by the King of Prussia, and both settled there.
Their last years were spent in writing a definitive dictionary, the
Deutsches Wörterbuch, the first volume being published in 1854. The work was carried on by future generations.