Grimms' Fairy Tales


Grimms' Fairy Tales, originally known as the Children's and Household Tales, is a German collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, first published on 20 December 1812. Vol. 1 of the first edition contained 86 stories, which were followed by 70 more tales, numbered consecutively, in the 1st edition, Vol. 2, in 1815. By the seventh edition in 1857, the corpus of tales had expanded to 200 tales and 10 "Children's Legends". It is considered the seminal work of Western children's literature and is listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Register.

Origin

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were two of ten children from Dorothea and Philipp Wilhelm Grimm. Philipp was a highly regarded district magistrate in Steinau an der Straße, about from Hanau. Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to school for a classical education once they were of age, while their father was working. They were very hard-working pupils throughout their education. They followed in their father's footsteps and started to pursue a degree in law, and German history. In 1796, their father died at the age of 44 from pneumonia. This was a tragic time for the Grimms because the family lost all financial support and relied on their aunt, Henriette Zimmer, and grandfather, Johann Hermann Zimmer. At the age of 11, Jacob was compelled to be head of the household and provide for his family. After downsizing their home because of financial reasons, Henriette sent Jacob and Wilhelm to study at the prestigious high school, Lyzeum, in Kassel. In school, their grandfather wrote to them saying that because of their current situation, they needed to apply themselves industriously to secure their future welfare.
Shortly after attending Lyzeum, their grandfather died and they were again left to themselves to support their family in the future. The two became intent on becoming the best students at Lyzeum, since they wanted to live up to their deceased father. They studied more than twelve hours a day and established similar work habits. They also shared the same bed and room at school. After four years of rigorous schooling, Jacob graduated head of his class in 1802. Wilhelm contracted asthma and scarlet fever, which delayed his graduation by one year although he was also head of his class. Both were given special dispensations for studying law at the University of Marburg. They particularly needed this dispensation because their social standing at the time was not high enough to have normal admittance. University of Marburg was a small, 200-person university where most students were more interested in activities other than schooling. Most of the students received stipends even though they were the richest in the state. The Grimms received no stipends because of their social standing but were content since this kept the distractions away.

Professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny

Jacob attended the university first. He reportedly showed proof of his hard work ethic and quick intelligence. Wilhelm joined Jacob at the university, and Jacob drew the attention of Professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny, founder of its historical school of law. He became a prominent personal and professional influence on the brothers. Throughout their time at university, the brothers became quite close with Savigny and were able to use his personal library as they became interested in German law, history, and folklore. Savigny asked Jacob to join him in Paris as an assistant, and Jacob went with him for a year. While he was gone, Wilhelm became very interested in German literature and started collecting books. Once Jacob returned to Kassel in 1806, he adopted his brother's passion and changed his focus from law to German literature. While Jacob studied literature and took care of their siblings, Wilhelm continued on to receive his degree in law at Marburg. During the Napoleonic Wars, Jacob interrupted his studies to serve the Hessian War Commission.
In 1808, their mother died, and this was especially hard on Jacob as he took the position of father figure, while also trying to be a brother. From 1806 to 1810, the Grimm family had barely enough money to properly feed and clothe themselves. During this time, Jacob and Wilhelm were concerned about the stability of the family.
Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano were good friends of the brothers and wanted to publish folk tales, so they asked the brothers to collect oral tales for publication. The Grimms collected many old books and asked friends and acquaintances in Kassel to tell tales and to gather stories from others. Jacob and Wilhelm sought to collect these stories in order to write a history of old German Poesie and to preserve history.

Composition

The first volume of the first edition was published in 1812, containing 86 stories; the second volume of 70 stories followed in 1815. For the second edition, two volumes containing the Kinder- und Hausmärchen texts were issued in 1819 and the appendix was removed and published separately in the third volume in 1822, totaling 170 tales. The third edition appeared in 1837, the fourth edition in 1840, the fifth edition in 1843, the sixth edition in 1850, and the seventh edition in 1857. Stories were added, and also removed, from one edition to the next, until the seventh held 210 tales. Some later editions were extensively illustrated, first by Philipp Grot Johann and, after his death in 1892, by German illustrator Anton Robert Leinweber.
The first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales", they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter. Many changes through the editions – such as turning the wicked mother of the first edition in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel to a stepmother, were probably made with an eye to such suitability. Jack Zipes believes that the Grimms made the change in later editions because they "held motherhood sacred".
They removed sexual references—such as Rapunzel's innocently asking why her dress was getting tight around her belly, and thus naively revealing to the witch Dame Gothel her pregnancy and the prince's visits—but, in many respects, violence, particularly when punishing villains, became more prevalent.

Popularity

The brothers' initial intention of their first book, Children's and Household Tales, was to establish a name for themselves in the world. After publishing the first KHM in 1812, they published a second, augmented and re-edited, volume in 1815. In 1816 Volume I of the German Legends was published, followed in 1818, Volume II. The book that established their international success was Jacob's German Grammar in 1819. In 1825, the brothers published their Kleine Ausgabe or "small edition", a selection of 50 tales designed for child readers illustrated by Ludwig Emil Grimm. This children's version went through ten editions between 1825 and 1858.

Influence

Kinder- und Hausmärchen is listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Registry.
The Grimms believed that the most natural and pure forms of culture were linguistic and based in history. Their work influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, the English Joseph Jacobs, and Jeremiah Curtin, an American who collected Irish tales. There was not always a pleased reaction to their collection. Joseph Jacobs was in part inspired by his complaint that English children did not read English fairy tales; in his own words, "What Perrault began, the Grimms completed".
W. H. Auden praised the collection during World War II as one of the founding works of Western culture. The tales themselves have been put to many uses. Adolf Hitler praised them so strongly that the Allies of World War II warned against them, as Hitler thought they were folkish tales showing children with sound racial instincts seeking racially pure marriage partners; for instance, Cinderella with the heroine as racially pure, the stepmother as an alien, and the prince with an unspoiled instinct being able to distinguish. Writers who have written about the Holocaust have combined the tales with their memoirs, as Jane Yolen in her Briar Rose.
Three individual works of Wilhelm Grimm include Altdänische Heldenlieder, Balladen und Märchen in 1811, Über deutsche Runen in 1821, and Die deutsche Heldensage in 1829.
The Grimm anthology has been a source of inspiration for artists and composers. Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, and Rie Cramer are among the artists who have created illustrations based on the stories.

English-language collections

"Grimms' Fairy Tales in English" by D.L. Ashliman provides a hyperlinked list of 50 to 100 English-language collections that have been digitized and made available online. They were published in print from the 1820s to 1920s. Listings may identify all translators and illustrators who were credited on the title pages, and certainly identify some others.

1812 edition translations

These are some translations of the original collection, also known as the first edition of Volume I.
  • Zipes, Jack, ed., tr. The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition.
  • Loo, Oliver ed., tr. ''The Original 1812 Grimm Fairy Tales. A New Translation of the 1812 First Edition Kinder- und Hausmärchen Collected through the Brothers Grimm''

1857 edition translations

These are some translations of the two-volume seventh edition :

List

The acronym "KHM" stands for Kinder- und Hausmärchen. The titles are those as of 1857. Some titles in 1812 were different. All editions from 1812 until 1857 split the stories into two volumes.
This section contains 211 listings, as "KHM 1" to "KHM 210" in numerical sequence plus "KHM 151a".
The next section "Removed from final edition" contains 30 listings including 18 that are numbered in series "1812 KHM ###" and 12 without any label.

Volume 1

Volume 2

The children's legends

First appeared in the G. Reimer 1819 edition at the end of volume 2.
  • Saint Joseph in the Forest : KHM 201
  • The Twelve Apostles : KHM 202
  • The Rose : KHM 203
  • Poverty and Humility Lead to Heaven : KHM 204
  • The Divine Manna : KHM 205
  • The Three Green Twigs : KHM 206
  • The Blessed Virgin's Little Glass or Our Lady's Little Glass: KHM 207
  • The Little Old Lady or The Aged Mother: KHM 208
  • The Heavenly Marriage or The Heavenly Wedding: KHM 209
  • The Hazel Branch : KHM 210

Removed from final edition

  • 1812 KHM 6 The Nightingale and the Blindworm also
  • 1812 KHM 8 The Hand with the Knife
  • 1812 KHM 16 Mr. Ready and Done
  • 1812 KHM 22 The Children Who Played Slaughtering
  • 1812 KHM 27 Death and the Goose Keeper
  • 1812 KHM 33 Puss in Boots
  • 1812 KHM 34 Hansen's Telling Stars
  • 1812 KHM 37 The Napkin, the Knapsack, the Cannon Shell, and the Horn
  • 1812 KHM 43 The Strange Inn/The Wonderly Guesting Manor
  • 1812 KHM 54 Hans Folly
  • 1812 KHM 59 The Swan Prince
  • 1812 KHM 60 The Golden Egg
  • 1812 KHM 61 The Tailor's Tale of the Blessed Fortune
  • 1812 KHM 62 Bluebeard
  • 1812 KHM 64A '
  • 1812 KHM 66
  • 1812 KHM 68 The Summer and Winter Garden
  • 1812 KHM 70 The Ogre (fairytale)
  • 1812 KHM 71 Princess Mouse Skin
  • 1812 KHM 72 The Pear Doesn't Want to Fall
  • 1812 KHM 73 The Murder Castle
  • 1812 KHM 74 From Johannes-Wassersprung and Caspar-Wassersprung
  • 1812 KHM 75 Phoenix Bird
  • 1812 KHM 77 The Carpenter and the Turner
  • 1812 KHM 81 The Blacksmith and the Devil
  • 1812 KHM 82 The Three Sisters
  • 1812 KHM 84 The Mother In Law
  • 1812 KHM 85A Fragment of Snow Flower
  • 1812 KHM 85B Princess With The Louse
  • 1812 KHM 85C From Prince John (fragmentation)
  • 1812 KHM 85D The Good Rag (fragmentation)
  • 1815 KHM 99 The Frog Prince
  • 1815 KHM 104 The Faithful Animals
  • 1815 KHM 107 The Crows
  • 1815 KHM 119 The Sluggard and the Diligent
  • 1815 KHM 122 The Long Nose
  • 1815 KHM 129 The Lion and the Frog
  • 1815 KHM 130 The Soldier and the Carpenter
  • 1815 KHM 136 '
  • 1815 KHM 143 The Starving Children
  • 1815 KHM 152 Saint Solicitous
  • 1840 KHM 175 The Accident
  • 1843 KHM 182 Princess and the Pea
  • 1843 KHM 191 ''The Robber and His Sons''