Brothers Grimm

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (1785 – 1863/1786 – 1859), the “Brothers Grimm” were born into a civil servant’s family and spent their childhood in Steinau, Hesse, near Frankfurt am Main. While living and working in the city of Kassel, the brothers Grimm heard their neighbors tell wonderful folktales that had been passed down from generation to generation. The Grimms wanted to preserve these stories, so they wrote many of them down and published them in a book called “Kinder und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm” (“Children’s and Household Fairy Tales”) – today “Grimm's Fairy Tales”.

The stories, some of which are gruesome and were not originally intended for children, were adapted for younger audiences over the years. "Snow White," "Sleeping Beauty," "Cinderella" and "Hansel and Gretel" are all tales first recorded by the Brothers Grimm.

Besides their substantial work in collecting tales of German folklore, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm are considered as the founders of modern linguistics in Germany. “Grimm's Law”, discovered by Jacob Grimm, explains how the sounds in words shift over time and further studied and described the relations between different Indo-Germanic languages.

“Das Deutsche Wörterbuch” (German Dictionary) was published in 1854. This was the most important step towards establishing a uniform German language since Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible.