Biographies - Brothers Grimm
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born Germany in 1785 and 1786. The brothers were very close friends even though they had very different personalities. Wilhelm was easygoing, while Jacob was difficult and introverted. For most of their lives, they worked in the same room, at facing desks. They both studied law with the goal of becoming lawyers, like their father. However, during their studies Napoleon ruled over Germany and the Brothers became more interested in studying German heritage and culture. The Brothers became librarians because this job allowed them to do research and write books. A large part of their work was traveling across Germany and going into villages to hear the oral stories that had been told by people for generations. The Brothers saw themselves as saving the German folk tradition by writing down these stories and showing that the villages of Germany had a common culture of shared stories. They hoped to show that German culture was just as strong as those of England and France. Their type of research and books inspired other nationalistic researchers in Russia, Ireland and other parts of Europe. The Brothers Grimm published their first book of fairy tales, “Nursery and Household Tales” in 1812 – at the same time that Napoleon was beginning is disastrous invasion of Russia.
The Brothers also supported democracy. In 1837, they opposed the king of Hanover who ignored the regional constitution. As a result, they lost their jobs as professors at the local university. However, by this point many German nationalists supported the work of the brothers and they gave the brothers the financial support to continue their research. Jacob Grimm was elected to be part of the Frankfurt National Assembly which met in 1848 to form a united Germany. While this group failed to form a united Germany, it was an important part of the process in building a united Germany.
Later in their lives, the brothers began the process of writing a German language dictionary that would “contain the endless richness of our fatherland’s language”. This dictionary was more than a list of words. There dictionary was also a history of the German language and explained the grammatical ruled of the language. It was process for making a standardized German language and is comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary. The first volume took 16 years to write and it was incomplete at the time of the Brothers deaths – it was finished by their students.
Source # 1 - Preface to the Second Edition of the Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm (1819)
After a storm or another misfortune from the heavens has knocked an entire field of growing crops to the ground, it is possible that near some low hedges or bushes a small safe place can be found where a few growing spikes remain. If the sun shines again, they begin to grow, lonely and unnoticed. No hasty scythe harvests them for the great store houses. But in late summer, when they are ripe and full, poor hands come to search for them. Gleaned one by one, carefully bound together, and valued more than whole sheaves, they are carried home. They provide sustenance for the winter and are perhaps the only seeds for the future.
That is how it appeared to us when we saw how nothing more remained from all that had blossomed in earlier times. Even the memory of it all was almost completely lost among the people, but for a few songs, books, legends, and these innocent fairy tales. Gatherings around the oven, around the kitchen stove, on stair landings, holidays still celebrated, grazing pastures and forests in their silence, and above all the unspoiled imagination – these were the hedges that protected these seeds and passed them down from one age to another.
It was perhaps the right time to grab hold of these fairy tales, for those who preserved them were becoming ever rarer. Admittedly, those who still know them usually know quite a bit, because it is the people who die off, not the tales. But the custom itself is becoming less and less common, as are all the secret places in homes and gardens that live on from grandfather to grandson, giving way to the constant change of empty splendor, which is like the smile with which one speaks of fairy tales, a smile that appears distinguished but in reality costs very little. Where they still exist, they live, so that no one thinks about whether they are good or bad, if they are poetic or in poor taste for intelligent people. One knows them and loves them because that is the way they were learned, and one delights in them without any specific reason…
… There, in the famous old regions of German freedom, legends and fairy tales have been preserved as a regular feature of holidays and the country is still rich in inherited customs and songs. There, partly because written language is not yet disturbed by the introduction of outside influences nor overloaded until it is blunted, and partly because it assures that memory does not become careless, especially among peoples whose literature is not very significant, oral traditions prove themselves to be stronger and more unsullied replacements. Thus, Lower Saxony has also preserved itself more than other regions. How much more complete and internally rich a collection would have been in the fifteenth century, or in the sixteenth century, in the era of Hans Sachs and Fischart!..
…In addition to the tales in the second volume, we received numerous supplements to the first volume as well as better versions of many of the stories published there from the same or similar sources. As a hilly land far away from the grand boulevards and mostly occupied with farming, Hesse has the advantage of being better able to preserve old tales and customs. A certain seriousness, a healthy, thorough, and brave mind-set that history will not ignore, even the large and attractive frame of the region's men – it was at one time the actual dwelling place of the Chatten, a Germanic tribe – all these have been preserved and allow the lack of comfort and elegance (in comparison to other lands, Saxony, for example) to be considered more as an advantage. One perceives as well that regions which are rougher but also magnificent belong to the lifestyle of the whole as does a certain strictness and poverty. The Hessians must certainly be counted as those among our Fatherland's peoples who have held on most firmly through the changing times to the unique features of their essence as well as to their old dwelling places.
Source # 2 - In 1806, when Berlin was under French occupation, German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said,
“The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole."
Source # 3 - Johann von Herder said both, "spew out the ugly slime of the Seine. Speak German, O You German" and “What a treasure language is when kinship groups grow into tribes and nations. Even the smallest of nations…cherishes in and through its language the history, the poetry and songs about the great deeds of its forefathers. The language is its collective treasure.”
Source # 4 - The German Fatherland by Ernst Mortiz Arndt (1813)
Where is the German's fatherland?
Then name, oh, name the mighty land!
Wherever is heard the German tongue,
And German hymns to God are sung!
This is the land, thy Hermann's land;
This, German, is thy fatherland.
This is the German's fatherland,
Where faith is in the plighted hand, plighted: pledged or promised
Where truth lives in each eye of blue,
And every heart is staunch and true. staunch: loyal
This is the land, the honest land,
The honest German's fatherland.
This is the land, the one true land,
O God, to aid be thou at hand!
And fire each heart, and nerve each arm,
To shield our German homes from harm,
To shield the land, the one true land,
One Deutschland and one fatherland! Deutschland: Germany, in German
Source # 5 - Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner (1851) - This was part of the four opera Ring Cycle that Wagner composed based on the stories of Norse mythology. The Valkyries were Norse goddesses who rode over battlefield and decided which warriors would live and die, and then take the souls of the dead warriors of Valhalla to live with the gods until the end of the world.
