Reading: Authors

The Brothers Grimm: The Original Storytellers

 

            In literature, an "archetype" (pronounced ARK-type) is the original pattern or model used over and over in storytelling. In children's literature, there are archetypes for the children's personalities, heroes and heroines, villains, complications, plots, settings, and particular types of problems that lead to the resolution of the story.

 

They say there's no such thing as an original story. We just keep telling the same basic stories over and over again. But when it comes to assembling children's stories with the most archetypes, you'd have to say The Brothers Grimm came as close as anybody to being the originals in children's literature.

 

These German brothers published collections of European folk tales and fairy tales that got down on paper the stories told around the family fireplace for generations. They contributed most of the children's stories that are familiar parts of the children's literature of western civilization.

 

Because of them, we all know such tales as "Rumpelstiltskin", "Snow White", "Rapunzel", "Cinderella", "Hansel and Gretel", "Little Red Riding Hood", and "The Frog Prince".

 

Jacob was slightly older (1785-1863) and was a scholar of how vocabulary words and their sounds shift over time. He and Wilhelm (1876-1859) wrote a German dictionary together that was so big, it weighed 185 pounds.

 

Their real aim in life was studying the language and attempting to unify Germany, but the folk tales that made them world-famous were a sort of a byproduct, or accident, of their main work as they collected the stories from peasants and villagers as they went along.

 

They invited people to their house to tell the stories so that they could write them down. Some of the people who shared the stories were rich, and had heard the tales from their servants. Others offered stories that weren't actually German, but came from France or other places. But the Brothers Grimm were just glad to get the stories written down for the first time, and collected several dozen of them all together.

 

There were nine children born in their family, and while they were far from rich, they had a happy childhood in the German countryside. But when Jacob, the oldest, was 15, their father died, and two years later their grandfather died. Their mother couldn't afford to run the household; it is thought that many of the folk tales they collected are about children who live in poverty, not only because a lot of children did in those times, but also because the Brothers Grimm themselves knew all about that.

 

 

 

Sculpture of brothers Grimm in Hanau, Germany, where they grew up

 

Jacob remained a bachelor throughout his life, but Wilhelm married a childhood friend who had told the brothers the story of "Little Red Riding Hood". They lived as an extended family under one roof.

 

Americans will be glad to know that the Grimm Brothers were politically active, urging Germans to change their system of government to be more like America's. They were part of a revolution against the king that failed for the short term. But eventually Germany did develop a system much like what we have in the United States.

 

Some of the Grimms' stories (including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and The Princess and the Frog) have been made into animated feature films by Walt Disney Animation Studios.