The Brothers Grimm and the Notes that Saved Our Fairy Tales
"It was perhaps just the right time to record these tales since those people who should be preserving them are becoming more and more scarce."
Once upon a time, Cinderella was almost lost to history. Same with Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, these stories circulated by word of mouth through the Hessen region of what is now Germany.1 But the elderly people who shared these stories were dying and with them, the tales—or so the story goes.
Two brothers, Wilhelm (1786-1859) and Jacob (1785-1863) Grimm, set out to capture what they saw as Germany’s heritage. In their introduction to the first edition of Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), the brothers emphasize the threat of obsolescence:
It was perhaps just the right time to record these tales since those people who should be preserving them are becoming more and more scarce.2
Preserving a national identity was especially important to the Grimm brothers because Germany, as we know it, did not exist yet. Rather, it was fractured into small states. Not only that, but the brothers began collecting their tales in earnest during the Napoleonic Wars, while living in a state that had been taken over by the French. In fact, Jacob served as librarian to Napoleon’s brother, King Jérôme of Westphalia.
Though the Grimm brothers wouldn’t live to see a unified Germany in 1871, they dedicated their lives to solidifying a national culture—which they believed should be based on a shared language. Similarly, they also believed a nation should celebrate its shared stories. And so, they set out to collect folktales—fictional stories told by the people (Das Volk).
The history of the Grimms, however, has come down to us shrouded in myths concerning how the brothers gathered and preserved their tales. Their notes reveal a far more interesting and more accurate story.
Myth #1: The Tales Came Straight from Peasants’ Mouths
Popular images of the Grimms present the brothers wandering the countryside and listening to peasants in the field. The brothers encouraged this myth, as they wrote in the introduction to the first edition,
…almost everything has been collected from oral traditions.3
This is misleading, as the Grimms’ expansive library makes clear. Over 700 books in their personal library4 relate to their work on the tales. The brothers wrote all over the books, crossing out passages, scribbling notes in the margins, and inserting slips of paper.5
As we see in a recently discovered book from their collection, they wrote lists of themes with corresponding page numbers in the inside covers of their books.6
While books from the Grimms’ personal library were an exciting discovery, even more exciting was finding one of the very first manuscripts they wrote to capture the folktales, the Ölenberg manuscript, which had been lost until recently.7
In the Ölenberg manuscript, the brothers clearly mark books as references. For example, they note an early source for Hansel and Gretel as the French writer, Charles Perrault’s “Le Petit Poucet”—a surprising reference considering their focus on German nationalism.
Often, they include page numbers for easy reference, as they do with a source for “Armes Mädchen” or “Poor Girl.”
In addition to gathering tales from printed books, the brothers themselves gathered many of the tales from educated, bourgeois women. In fact, the brothers regarded Dorothea Viehmann, who heard tales while growing up in her father’s inn, as their greatest source. Tellingly, though, they described her as a “Bäuerin,” which roughly translates to a country or peasant woman.8 Still, the brothers were so grateful to Viehmann that they included her portrait in the 1819 edition of the tales.
When describing Viehmann, the brothers take pains to point out how her version of the stories never change.9 Meanwhile, they did quite a bit of editing themselves.
Myth #2: The Brothers Relayed the Tales Exactly as they Heard Them
The brothers disagreed about how much editing the stories required. Jacob felt they should hardly edit the stories, while Wilhelm believed that they needed to alter the stories for readability and morality. The manuscripts show that Wilhelm won the argument.10
The Ölenberg manuscript, as one of the earliest manuscripts is telling. The brothers wrote the tales in this manuscript in 1810 and sent it to their friend Clemens Brentano. The tales in this manuscript are in skeletal form, with just the architecture in place.
For example, this is how “Snow White” begins in the Ölenberg manuscript:
Once upon a time it was winter & snowed down from the sky and a queen sat at a window of ebony wood & sewed. She really wanted to have a child.
Readers of the Grimms’ first edition would find a more poetic introduction to the story:
Once upon a time it was the middle of winter, and the snowflakes fell like feathers from the sky. A beautiful queen sat and sewed at a window that had a frame made of black ebony.11
More striking, in subsequent editions, Wilhelm would edit out sexual innuendo and incest. For example, in the 1812 edition, Rapunzel innocently asks why her dress has gotten so tight. In subsequent editions, the brothers erased the pregnancy entirely.
Even once published, the Grimms continued to work on their collection.
As the editions progressed, Wilhelm reshaped their stories to fit Christian morality, making them more appropriate for children. Yet, while he removed sex from the tales, he heightened the violence, which often served to emphasize the tales’ moral lessons.
Myth #3: The Folk Tales were the Grimms’ Most Important Project
The brothers would be shocked to learn that they are most well known today for their folk tales. They would have thought their most enduring legacy would be the German dictionary to which they devoted the latter half of their lives.
For their dictionary—a culmination of their life’s work of supporting German nationalism—they accumulated slips of paper that contain an individual word, a quotation showcasing its use, and its source.
Then, they alphabetized the words and copied their work onto single sheets of paper like this one, that begins with Dame (lady):
When he died in 1859, Wilhelm had only gotten to the letter “D.” After his brother’s death, Jacob continued working on the dictionary but only made it to the letter “F” before his death. Unknowingly, Jacob inscribed his final entry for the word "Frucht” (fruit) before putting down his pen for the last time.12
When Wilhelm lay dying, Jacob counted his brother’s last breaths. And when Jacob lay on his own deathbed, he supposedly reached for a portrait of Wilhelm. The two brothers, rarely apart in their lifetimes, remain together in death. Not only are they buried beside each other, but they are known throughout the world simply as the Brothers Grimm.
Notes on the Grimms’ Notes
Create an index for your books: Knowing they would return to books as they wrote the folktales, the Grimms created indexes of themes in the inside pages of their books.
Always consult multiple sources: the Grimms were never satisfied with a single source for their tales. They consulted printed books and living story-tellers. And despite their nationalist project, they also studied French texts (like Perrault’s versions of the tales).
Long projects require different stages of note-taking: the brothers worked on their dictionary in multiple stages—first collecting individual words on slips of paper and then organizing many words on a single sheet.
Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.
Yours in note-taking,
P.S.
Paid subscribers look out for a special Halloween themed post on the Brothers Grimm later this week!
My own last name comes from this region. My grandfather’s family was based in Marburg, which is where the Grimms went to college. While researching the brothers, I wondered if they ever crossed paths with my great-great grandparents.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The Original Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. With Wilhelm Grimm et al., Princeton University Press, 2014.
Grimm, The Original Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition.
Most of the brothers’ books are in the university library of the Humboldt University in Berlin. A project to digitize their personal library is underway.
UAM, Administrator strony. A True Gem for Grimm Brothers’ Enthusiasts - Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. 23 Apr. 2024.
Ann Schmiesing notes that there is a good deal of scholarly debate over how the brothers portrayed Viehmann.
Schmiesing, Ann. The Brothers Grimm: A Biography. Yale University Press, 2024, p.118.
Of Viehmann, the brothers write:
Anyone who believes that there might be, as a rule, slight adulteration in the transmission [of a tale] and negligent preservation [. . .] should hear how exact she always remains in telling the same tale and how intent she is on accuracy. When repeating a tale, she never alters anything substantial in it, and she corrects a mistake as soon as she notices it, even in the middle of her telling. For people who continue in a mode of life that has remained unchanged, the adherence to that which has been handed down…
Quoted in Schmiesing, p. 118.
Wilhelm did the bulk of the work on the tales. Jacob had become immersed in his philological work (studying the historical development of language). He is still known today in linguistic circles for his work on consonant shifts, now known as Grimm’s Law.
Schmiesing, p. 72.
Schmiesing, p. 253.
After this fascinating read, I am left wondering how the world might be different if the Brothers Grimm had allowed the stories told to them by Dorothea Viehmann and others to keep their references to pregnancy instead of editing out sex and adding violence to fit the model of a Christian morality tale.
I never knew that the tales weren’t invented by them, but rather preserved from a long cultural heritage!