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| Mindfields
01 Contents |
| Film
Review - Brothers Grimm |
Old
Tales, New Reality
With a growing brigade of young nieces and
nephews in charge of my life, I have been
re-acquainted with fairytales. There are kings,
queens, handsome princes and beautiful
princesses. There are witches, elves, fairies
and animals that can talk. Stories in which,
without exception, someone gets poisoned or
murdered or dies horribly. If no one is poisoned
or murdered, then there is the huge chasm
between the haves and the have-nots. The ugly
princess is invariably the wicked princess (Snow
White’s beautiful stepmother being the only
noteworthy exception). The Little Mermaid throws
herself into the sea instead of stabbing the cad
Prince. |
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The
Real Brothers Grimm
Jakob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm were born in 1785 and 1786, respectively, in Hanau near Frankfurt in
Hesse. They were among the six children of a prosperous lawyer. The family was reduced to poverty after the death of their father and grandfather.
The two brothers were educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium
in Kassel and read law at the University of Marburg.
They were in their early twenties when they began the
linguistic and philological studies that would culminate
in their collected editions of fairy and folk tales.
Though their collections of tales became very popular,
they were mainly a byproduct of the linguistic research
which was the Brothers’ primary goal.
Less well known to the general public is the Brothers’
work on a German dictionary, the first major step in
creating a standardized “modern” German language
since Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible to
German.
In the time in which the Brothers Grimm lived, Germany
as we know it today did not yet exist; it consisted of
hundreds of principalities and small or mid-sized
countries. The unifying factor for the German people of
the time was a common language. There was no significant
German literary history. So part of what motivated the
Brothers was the desire to help create a German
identity.
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©
mindfields 2007
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