Gebrüder Grimm

German Fairy Tale Collectors and Storytellers

The Brothers Grimm (Brüder or Gebrüder* Grimm) are Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, German professors best known for publishing collections of authentic folk tales and fairy tales, born in 1785 and 1786, respectively, in Hanau near Frankfurt. They were educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kassel and later both read law at the University of Marburg. In 1830, they formed a household in Göttingen where they were to become professors. In 1837, the Brothers Grimm joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to protest against the abolition of the liberal constitution of the state of Hanover by King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover. This group came to be known in Germany as Die Göttinger Sieben (The Göttingen Seven). Invoking their right to resist on reasons of natural and constitutional justice, they protested against the King's hubris to abrogate the constitution. For this, all professors were fired from their university posts and some even deported. Though politically divided by borders of duchies and kingdoms at that time, public opinion and academia in Germany almost unanimously supported the Grimms and their colleagues against the monarch. Wilhelm died in 1858; his elder brother Jakob died in 1863. They are buried in the St Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in the Schöneberg district of Berlin. The Grimms helped foment a nationwide democratic public opinion in Germany and are cherished as the progenitors of the German democratic movement, whose revolution of 1848/1849 was crushed brutally by the Kingdom of Prussia which reinstalled an absolute monarchy. *The use 'Brüder Grimm' is more common, the term 'Gebrüder' stresses their work relationship