G R I M M ` S B R O T H E R S

The Brothers Grimm is the term used to refer to writers Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859). There were two German brothers famous for their stories for children and also for its Dictionary German, German Legends, German Grammar, German Mythology Tales of Grimm, which has earned them recognition as founders of the German. Grimm's law receives its name from Jacob Grimm.

 

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm

 

In 1803 the brothers Grimm met at the University of Marburg (Hesse) to the romantic Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, who awakened in them an interest in folk tales. Jacob and Wilhelm began collecting and compiling the stories of oral tradition in bourgeois surroundings of Kassel, marked by the character of the Huguenots. It was just a woman from a family of Huguenots who obtained many of the stories collected in his book Kinder-und Hausmärchen (Tales for children and home), [1] two volumes published in 1812 and 1815. The collection was expanded in 1857 and is popularly known as Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. His extraordinary diffusion has been instrumental in disseminating stories like Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, The source of the fairies or John without fear. A controversial aspect of this success is that in many places its written version has shifted almost entirely to those still alive in local oral tradition.The texts were decorating and, sometimes, censoring from edition to edition because of its extreme hardness. The Grimms defend themselves from criticism by arguing that his stories were not directed to children. But to meet the demands of the bourgeois public, had to change several details of the originals. For example, the mother of Hansel and Gretel became a stepmother, because the fact of leaving children in the forest (which was not recognized symbolic meaning) did not fit the traditional image of the mother at the time. I also had to change or, rather, omit explicit sexual references.The authors collected some stories by Dorothea Viehmann French and families Hassenflug and Wild (a daughter of Wild was to become the wife of Wilhelm). But to write a storybook truly German, those stories that came from France to German-speaking countries, such as Puss in Boots and Bluebeard, had to be removed from subsequent editions.In 1812, the brothers Grimm edited the first volume of stories for children and home, where his collection of short stories published, followed in 1814 his second volume. A third edition appeared in 1837 and the last edition supervised by them in 1857. The first collections were sold modestly in Germany, at first only a few hundred copies a year. The first editions were not directed at children, initially refused Grimm use illustrations in his books and scholarly notes preferred footnotes, which occupied almost as much space as the stories themselves, in their early writers never considered for children but patriotic folklorists. Germany at the time of the Brothers Grimm had been invaded by the armies of Napoleon, and the new government sought to suppress the local culture of the old regime of fiefdoms and principalities of Germany in the early nineteenth century.