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ure and a greater focus on national culture, especially

g, others turned their attention to the investigation of the

mantic historians.

o ( 17781842) and Achim von Arnim ( 17811831), who

and legends, the brothers brought out their first
se tales were collected by recording stories told by
like style.

guages and their relationship to modern German. Jakob

edition of his Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar)

milar words of related languages, such as the

me known as "Grimm's law." It was later expanded to
thers were not the first to take note of such similarities,
working out the details of the rules.

was published in 1819.

The brothers, especially Jakob, were also working to document the relationship between sim
English apple and the German Apfel. Their creation of the rules for such relationships becam
account for all word relationships in the Indo-European group of languages. The Grimm brot
but they can be credited with gathering the bulk of linguistic ( related to language) data and w

The Grimm Brothers were poets. The connotation of "poet" has changed in the twenty first
collection process, their major intent was to create a source to which students of folklore--s
general public didn't like their first publication ( 1812) the Brothers re-edited the collection. T
more literary elements to the tales. By their third publication, their tales potentially seemed
trend of the time.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born to a prosperous couple ( the father was a lawyer), Jaco
house in the Hessian village of Hanau, near Kassel, and the boys received a sound primary ed
everything changed. Their father died, and the Grimms no longer had any money. With diffi
and then, as their father would have wished, law school. But soon afterward they began a d
Nursery and Household Tales ( Die Kinder- und Hausmrchen), first published in two volu
Grimms Fairy Tales.

The Grimms grew up in the febrile atmosphere of German Romanticism, which involved inte
with the supposedly deep, pre-rational culture of the German peasantry, the Volk. Young m
sharing stories about what the troll said to the woodcutter, and publishing collections of the
movement that the Grimms joined in their early twenties. They had political reasons, tooa
and the installation of his brother Jrme as the ruler of the Kingdom of Westphalia, a Frenc
intellectuals belief in a German people that was culturally and racially one, and to the hope

milar words of related languages, such as the

me known as "Grimm's law." It was later expanded to
thers were not the first to take note of such similarities,
working out the details of the rules.

century. When the Grimm Brothers first began their

specifically German folklore--could refer. However, as the
This was when they, particularly Wilhelm, began adding
d more "kid friendly," as they were fitting the fairy tale

ob in 1785, Wilhelm in 1786. The family lived in a big

ducation at home. But when they were eleven and ten
iculty, the brothers managed to attend a good lyceum
different project, which culminated in their famous book
umes, in 1812 and 1815, and now generally known as

ense nationalism and, in support of that, a fascination

men fresh from reading Plutarch at university began
ese Mrchen, as folk tales were called. That is the
above all, Napoleons invasion of their beloved Hesse,
ch vassal state. If ever there was a stimulus to German
e of a politically unified Germany, this was it.