Feb 24 2009
Wilhelm Grimm of the Brothers Grimm
~The Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm (left) and Jacob (right)~
We often refer to them as the Brothers Grimm and hardly as Jacob Grimm or Wilhelm Grimm. Well, today, February 24th, is the birthday of Wilhelm Grimm (1786), the younger of the two by a year’s gap. Wilhelm (and so was his brother Jacob) was born in Hanau, Germany. He married Dortchen Wild, a beautiful lady who was also very interested with fairy tales and helped them find stories for their stories.
The Brothers Grimm or Die Brüder Grimm in German were famous story tellers, in fact one of the best-known not only in Europe but in the world. And who among us are not familiar with classic tales such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Hansel and Gretel.
The Brothers Grimm were German intellectuals who collected and wrote about folk and fairy tales. They also used their collections for their work in linguistics. They published the Grimm’s Fairy Tales in 1812, which was the first collection of folklore, and few years later, A Study of the German Language.
