The Brothers Grimm

October 1, 2024
The real Brothers Grimm are rescued from Disneyfication and myth. The timeless fairy tales Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected, nurtured, and published have survived to become part of the world's popular and literary canon. Not so a sense of who the Grimms were and the breadth of what they achieved. Many of the works they published beyond the tales are largely forgotten. Few know of their extensive, often groundbreaking work on mythology and medieval literature, on legends, on a comprehensive German dictionary, Jacob's scholarship on grammar, or the cultural significance they attached to their various projects. In her thorough, densely detailed biography, Schmiesing restores them to prominence. She places the Brothers Grimm in the context of a tumultuous era preceding 19th-century German unification, exploring the exceptionally close brothers' personal lives, accomplishments, and striking inconsistencies. For much of the book's length, the tales take center stage. The surprise is that the Grimms assembled these stories not from peasants telling folktales in the field, but from educated young women, whose recalled narratives the brothers sometimes reworked, not always remembering their own dictum that editing should be "a gentle nurturing that preserves the organic nature of the text." The Grimms recovered many now-famous stories, wishing to preserve them before they were lost to the forces of urbanization, industrialization, and war. As Schmiesing demonstrates, the aim was not simply to preserve the stories and traditions, but to reveal how they had descended (in their view) from a vast store of ancient epic literature--the collective voice of a people. As such, the tales came to be seen by some as "dangerous," reflecting a nationalistic fervor and image of Germanness that was "too easily appropriated by Nazi ideology." Yet, as the author underscores, the Grimms were scholars of high aspirations, not ideologues. A magisterial, if occasionally overfurnished, rendering of the Grimms' lives.

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Starred review from October 7, 2024
Schmiesing (Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales), a German and Scandinavian studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, delivers a first-rate biography of Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and his younger brother Wilhelm (1786–1859). Jacob and Wilhelm grew up in Hessen, a mountainous German-speaking region that they sentimentalized as “relatively untouched by modernizing forces.” The upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars gave the Grimms a “view of modern society as beset by ills on a scale not experienced in medieval times,” a nostalgia that would drive their studies on folk tales as windows into an idealized medieval past. Discussing how the pair composed their famous Children’s and Household Tales, Schmiesing explains that contrary to the preface’s implication that the brothers traveled the countryside collecting traditional stories from illiterate peasant women, most entries were told to them by educated young women in their social and professional circles. Schmiesing expertly weaves together the Grimms’ life stories with broader historical currents, showing how their fascination with fairy tales stemmed from their belief that a united Germany bound together by a shared folk culture was the solution to the near-constant wars of conquest that plagued the region during their lifetimes. Rich in history and insight, this stands as the new authoritative biography on the famed fairy tale collectors.

October 15, 2024
The Brothers Grimm, a name so synonymous with the folktales the two brothers collected and popularized that readers may be forgiven for mistaking the name for characters in one of the brothers' grim tales. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (German for wrathful) were born in the late eighteenth century, a tumultuous time in Europe that fostered a national pride that led to the Grimms' interest in German songs, poetry, stories, and, eventually, folktales, a term that did not yet exist. Schmiesing's thoroughly researched and engaging study nicely balances academic rigor with accessibility for the lay reader. Of particular interest are the evolution of the folktale and the philosophical debate about how to modernize the texts to make them more enticing while sensitively retaining the vital core of a culture's oral tradition. One example is how an anonymously published epic written around 1200 eventually became Wagner's Ring. Readers will delight to learn how tales featuring Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood became and remain central cultural touchstones and beloved tales often shared, read, and reread.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.