THE PICTORIAL LANGUAGE OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH

Possibly the world's most popular inclination, the impulse to export your suffering to another seems to be near-universal. Not confined to any race, sex, or age category, the impulse to cause pain appears to well up from deep inside human beings. This is mysterious, because no one seems to enjoy pain when it is inflicted on them. Go figure.

Re: THE PICTORIAL LANGUAGE OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH

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Jacob (Ludwig Carl) Grimm (1785-1863)
by Petri Liukkonen

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm -- famous for their classical collections of folk songs and folktales, especially for KINDER- UND HAUSMÄRCHEN (Children's and Household Tales); generally known as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which helped to establish the science of folklore. Stories such as 'Snow White' and 'Sleeping Beauty' have been retold countless times, but they were first written down by the Brothers Grimm. In their collaboration Wilhelm selected and arranged the stories, while Jacob, who was more interested in language and philology, was responsible for the scholarly work. The English writer Ford Madox Ford sees in his masterly guide The March of the Literature (1938) that their tales were more than a mere reflection of German romanticism:

"But the real apotheosis of this side of the Teutonic cosmos came into its own through the labors of the brothers Ludwig Karl, and Wilhelm Karl Grimm for whom the measure of our administration may well be marked by the fact that there is nothing in the world left to say about their collection of fairy tales. It is, on the whole, wrong to concede the brothers Grimm to the romantics. They belonged to the earth movement and are known wherever the sky covers the land. That is the real German Empire."


Jacob Grimm was born in Hanau. His father, who was educated in law and served as a town clerk, died when Jacob was young. His mother Dorothea struggled to pay the education of the children. With financial help of Dorothea's sister, Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to Kasel to attend the Lyzeum. Jacob then studied law at Marburg. He worked from 1816 to 1829 as a librarian at Kasel, where his brother served as a secretary. Between 1821 and 1822 the brothers raised extra money by collecting three volumes of folktales. With these publications they wanted to show, that Germans shared a similar culture and advocate the unification process of the small independent kingdoms and principalities.

Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimms. Probably the German writer Clemens Bretano first awoke their interest in folk literature. Their first tales date from 1807. The most important informants included Dorothea Viehmann, the daughter of an innkeeper, Johann Friedrich Krause, an old dragoon, and Marie Hassenpflug, a 20-year-old friend of their sister, Charlotte, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie's stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and Perrault's Tales of My Mother Goose (1697).

The brothers moved in 1830 to Göttingen, Wilhelm becoming assistant librarian and Jacob librarian. In 1835 Wilhelm was appointed professor, but they were dismissed two years later for protesting against the abrogation of the Hannover constitution by King Ernest Augustus. In 1841 they became professors at the University of Berlin, and worked with DEUTSCHES WÖRTERBUCH. Its first volume appeared in the 1850s; the work was finished in the 1960s.

The Grimms made major contributions in many fields, notably in the studies of heroic myth and the ancient religion and law. They worked very close, even after Wilhelm married in 1825. Jacob remained unmarried. Wilhelm died in Berlin on December 16, 1859 and Jacob four years later on September 20, 1863. He had just finished writing the dictionary definition for Frucht.

The Grimms came over a century after Madame d'Aulnoy and Charles Perrault, who between them first created and popularized the literary fairy tale. Grimms were more intent on capturing the genuine oral tradition – earlier Ludwig Tieck and Johann-Karl Musaeus relied more on the gothic tradition than folklore. In English Grimms' Tales are often referred as "fairytales", but only a few of them involve mythical creatures. The first English translation appeared anonymously in 1823, under the title German Popular Stories, translated from the Kinder und Haus Märchen, collected by M.M. Grimm, from Oral Tradition. It was the work of the London lawyer Edgar Taylor and his collaborator David Jardine. Noteworthy, this edition was illustrated by George Cruikshank; Jacob and Wilhelm themselves followed the example and encouraged their younger brother Ludwig Emil to illustrate the KLEINE AUSGABE (1825). After its appearance, the Tales became to be regarded as a children's book.

Kinder- und Hausmärchen was published in two volumes (1812-1815). In 1810 they had sent to Bretano brief summaries of the tales, but when his plans to publish an edition of fairy tales never realized, they turned to Achim von Arnim, who encouraged the brothers to publish their own collection. The final edition appeared in 1857 and contained 211 tales; a further 28 had been dropped from earlier editions, making 239 in total. The Grimms wrote down most of the tales from oral narrations, collecting the material mainly from peasants in Hesse. The first edition included stories in 10 dialects as well as High German. Among the best-known stories are 'Hansel and Gretel,' 'Cinderella,' 'Rumpelstiltskin,' 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' and 'The Golden Goose.' The stories include magic, communication between animals and men, and moral values, teachings of social right and wrong. Critics complained, that some of the tales were not appropriate for children, who nevertheless were fascinated by their grim magic: "What a tender young creature! what a nice plump mouthful – she will be better to eat than the old woman." (from 'Little Red-Cap')

The brothers are generally treated as a team, though Jacob concentrated on linguistic studies and Wilhelm was primarily a literary scholar. Jacob wrote down most of the tales published in the first volume. From 1819 onward, Wilhelm supervised all subsequent editions on his own, because Jacob was repeatedly away on diplomatic missions. During the editing phase they constantly consulted each other.

The Grimms' were affected by the ideas of Enlightenment and the German Romanticism and its interest in mythology, folklore and dreams. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm argued that folktales should be collected from oral sources, which aimed at genuine reproduction of the original story. Their method became a model for other scholars. However, in practice the tales were modified, and in later editions of the fairytales Wilhelm's editing and literary aspiration were more prominent.

From his first book, ÜBER DEN ALTEDEUTSCHEN MEISTERGESANG (1811) Jacob Grimm supported the theory about the unique relationship between the 'original' German language and the folktales, whose origins were coeval with the origins of German culture.

While collaborating with Wilhelm, Jakob turned to study of philology, producing the DEUTSCHE GRAMMATIK. Jakob's views on grammar influenced deeply the contemporary study of linguistics, Germanic, Romance, and Slavic. The work is in use even now. In 1822 Jacob devised the principle of consonantal shifts in pronunciation known as Grimm's Law. He illustrated the changes in Germanic by citing contrasting cognates in Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit.

In Jacob Grimm's DEUTSCHE MYTHOLOGIE fairy tales are traced in the pre-Christian era, in ancient faith and superstitions of the Germanic peoples. The archaic pre-medieval Germany was seen representing a Golden Age, a period of comparative harmony and happiness before it was lost. This romantic view of the history owed much to Bible's tale of Eden or perhaps also Arthurian legends.

Both brothers argued that folktales should be recorded and presented in print in a form as close as possible to the original mode. It also meant that some of the stories contained unpleasant details. Doves peck out the eyes of Cinderella's stepsisters, and in 'The Juniper Tree' a woman decapitates her stepson. A witch kills her own daughter in 'Darling Roland.' "These stories are suffused with the same purity that makes children so marvelous and blessed," wrote Wilhelm Grimm in the preface to the Nursery and Household Tales. In practice the brothers modified folktales in varying ways, sometimes even intensifying violent episodes. Especially references to sexuality embarrassed the Grimms'. In 'The Snow White' the violence was toned down by later editions: at the end of the story the wicked Queen is forced to put on red-hot iron slippers and dance till she dies. In 'Hansel and Gretel' the witch ends up in the oven and is baked alive. At the end of World War II, allied commanders banned the publication of the Grimm tales in Germany in the belief that they had contributed to Nazi savagery.

Leading German Romantics: J.W. Goethe, Novalis, Friedrich Schiller. -- Note: In Finland Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), who created the Finnish national epic Kalevala, collected the material -- ballads, lyrical songs and incantations -- from oral sources as the Grimms. -- Poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) studied Irish legends and tales, which he published with George Russell and Douglas Hyde in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888). -- Although Grimm's Fairy Tales is in fact much closer to genuine folk tales, the Brothers Grimm probably rival Hans Christian Andersen as the best-known tellers of fairy tales. Their stories have been utilized by many modern fantasists, including Tanith Lee, Robin McKinley, and Patricia Wrede. -- For further reading: Grimm Brothers and the Germanic Past, ed. by Elmer H. Antonsen (1990); The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Maria M. Tatar (1990); The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, ed. by James M. McGlathery (1991); The Brothers Grimm and Their Critics by Christa Kamenetsky (1992); Grimms' Fairy Tales by James M. McGlathery (1993); The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales, ed. by Donald Haase (1993); The Brothers Grimm: Two Lives, One Legacy by Donald R. Hettinga (2001) -- Film: The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), dir. by Henry Levin, George Pal, starring Laurence Harvey, Karl Boehm, Claire Bloom, Barbara Eden - an account of the lives of the brothers, supplemeted by three stories, "The Dancing Princess," "The Cobbler and the Elves," and "The Singing Bone." -- Suom.: Suomeksi Grimmin satuja on kääntänyt myös mm. kirjailija Helmi Krohn (Lasten- ja kotisatuja 1-2, 1927). Uusi kolmiosainen laitos ilmestyi 1999.

Selected works:

• ÜBER DEN ALTEDEUTSCHEN MEISTERGESANG, 1811
• ed. (with Wilhelm Grimm): DIE BEIDEN ÄLTESTEN DEUTSCHEN GEDICHTE AUS DEM ACHTEN JAHRHUNDERT: DAS LIED VON HILDEBRAND UND HADUBRAND UND DAS WEISSENBRUNNER GEBET, 1812
• KINDER- UND HAUSMÄRCHEN, 1812-15 (2nd. ed. 1819, 3rd. ed. 1837, 4th ed. 1840, 5th ed. 1843, 6th ed. 1850, 7th. ed. 1857) - German Popular Stories (tr. Edgar Taylor, illustrated by George Cruikshank, 2 vols., 1823-1826) / Household Tales (tr. 1853, illustrated by H. Wehnert) / Grimm's Fairy Tales (tr. H.B. Paull, 1868) / Household Tales (tr. 1884) / Household Stories (tr. Lucy Crane, 1886) / Household Fairy Tales (tr. Ella Bodley, 1890) / Tales (tr. Wanda Gág, 1936) / German Folk Tales (tr. Francis P. Magoun Jr. and Alexander H. Krappe, 1960) / Fairy Tales (tr. James Stern, 1972) / Grimm's Tales for Young and Old, 1977 (translated by Ralph Manheim, 1977) / Fairy Tales (tr. Jack Zipes, 1987) Children's and Household Tales - Koti-satuja lapsille ja nuorisolle (suom. J.A. Hahnsson, 1876) / Lasten- ja kotisatuja 1-2 (suom. Helmi Krohn, 1927) / Grimmin satuja (suom. 1930) / Grimmin satukirja (suom. Helena Anhava et al., 1962) / Grimmin satuja (suom. Aarno Peromies, 1973) / Grimmin sadut 1-3 (suom. ja toim. Raija Jänicke ja Oili Suominen, 1999)
• ed. (with Wilhelm Grimm): ALTDEUTSCHE WÄLDER, 1813-1816 (3 vols.)
• DEUTSCHE SAGEN, 1816-1818 (with Wilhelm Grimm; 2 vols.) -- The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm (tr. Donald Ward, 1981)
• DEUTSCHE GRAMMATIK, 1819-37 (4 vols.)
• DEUTSCHE RECHTS-ALTERHÜMER, 1828
• DEUTSCHE MYTHOLOGIE, 1835 -- Teutonic Mythology (tr. James Steven Stallybrass, 1883-1885)
• GESCHICHTE DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE, 1848 (2 vols.)
• DEUTSCHES WÖRTERBUCH, 1852-1961 (with Wilhelm Grimm, 16 vols., 32 bound in pairs)
• KLEINERE SCHRIFTEN, 1864-1890 (8 vols.)
• BRIEFE DER BRÜDER, 1923 (ed. H. Gürtler)
• DIE SCHÖNSTEN GRIMMS MÄRCHEN, 1950 (ed. Gisela Fischer) -- Tunnettuja Grimmin satuja (suom. Leena Niukkanen, 1979)
• REDEN UND AUFSÄTZE, 1966 (ed. W. Schoof)
• DIE ALLERSCHÖNSTEN MÄRCHEN DER BRÜDER GRIMM, 2004 (illustrated by Bernhard Oberdieck) - Grimmin veljesten parhaat sadut (suom. Heli Venhola, 2008)
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Re: THE PICTORIAL LANGUAGE OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 4:14 am

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Wilhelm (Carl) Grimm (1786-1859)
by Petri Liukkonen

Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm - famous for their classical collections of folk songs and folktales, especially for KINDER- UND HAUSMÄRCHEN (Children's and Household Tales); generally known as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Stories such as 'Snow White' and 'Sleeping Beauty' have been retold countless times, but they were first written down by the Brothers Grimm. In their collaboration Wilhelm, who was the more imaginative and literary of the two, selected and arranged the stories, while Jacob was responsible for the scholarly work.

"'Silly goose,' said the old woman. 'The door is big enough; just look, I can get in myself!' and she crept up and thrust her head into the oven. Then Gretel gave her a push that drove her far into it, and shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt. Oh! then she began to howl quite horribly, but Gretel ran away and the godless witch was miserably burnt to death." (from 'Hansel and Gretel')


Wilhelm Grimm was born in Hanau. His father, who was educated in law and served as a town clerk, died when Wilhelm was young. His mother Dorothea struggled to pay the education of the children. With financial help of Dorothea's sister, Jacob and Wilhelm were sent to Kasel to attend the Lyzeum. Wilhelm always suffered from poor health, which made regular work difficult. He was was nonetheless more animated, jovial, and sociable than Jacob. After studying law at Marburg, he worked as a secretary at Kassel, where Jacob served as librarian. In 1812, the year their fairy tales were first published, the Grimms were surviving on a single meal a day. Between 1821 and 1822 the brothers raised extra money by collecting three volumes of folktales. With these publications they wanted to show, that Germans shared a similar culture and advocate the unification process of the small independent kingdoms and principalities.

Altogether some 40 persons delivered tales to the Grimms. Probably the German writer Clemens Bretano first awoke their interest in folk literature. Their first tales date from 1807. The first volume, which contained 86 items, was published by Georg Andreas Reimer at Berlin. The most important informants included Dorothea Viehmann, the daughter of an innkeeper, Johann Friedrich Krause, an old dragoon, and Marie Hassenpflug, a 20-year-old friend of their sister, Charlotte, from a well-bred, French-speaking family. Marie's stories blended motifs from the oral tradition and Perrault's Tales of My Mother Goose (1697). From Dorothea Viehmann the brothers got the story about 'Cinderella'.

In 1829 the brothers moved to Göttingen, Wilhelm becoming assistant librarian and Jacob librarian. In 1835 Wilhelm was appointed professor, but they were dismissed two years later for protesting against the abrogation of the Hannover constitution by King Ernest Augustus. In 1840 the brothers accepted an invitation from the king of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to go to Berlin. There, as members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, they lectured at the university. In 1841 they became professors at the University of Berlin, and worked with their most ambitious enterprise, the DEUTSCHES WÖRTERBUCH, a large German dictionary. Its first volume appeared in the 1850s. The work, 32 volumes, was finished in the 1960s.

The Grimms made major contributions in many fields, notably in the studies of heroic myth and the ancient religion and law. They worked very close, even after Wilhelm married in 1825 his childhood friend Dortchen Wild, who was a prominent source of fairy tales for their collection. Jacob remained unmarried. Wilhelm died of infection in Berlin on December 16, 1859, and Jacob four years later on September 20, 1863.

The Grimms came over a century after Madame d'Aulnoy and Charles Perrault, who between them first created and popularized the literary fairy tale. Grimms were more intent on capturing the genuine oral tradition – earlier Ludwig Tieck and Johann-Karl Musaeus relied more on the gothic tradition than folklore. In English Grimms' Tales are often referred as "fairytales", but only a few of them involve mythical creatures. The first English translation appeared anonymously in 1823, but it was the work of the London solicitor Edgar Taylor and his collaborator David Jardine. Noteworthy, this edition was illustrated by George Cruikshank; Jacob and Wilhelm themselves followed the example and encouraged their younger brother Ludwig Emil to illustrate the KLEINE AUSGABE (1825). After its appearance, the Tales became to be regarded as a children's book.

Kinder- und Hausmärchen was originally published in two volumes (1812-1815). The final edition - the last to appear during their life time – was published in 1857 and contained 211 tales; a further 28 had been dropped from earlier editions, making 239 in total. The Grimms wrote down most of the tales from oral narrations, collecting the material mainly from peasants in Hesse. The first edition included stories in 10 dialects as well as High German. Among the best-known stories are 'Hansel and Gretel,' 'Cinderella,' 'Rumpelstiltskin,' 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' and 'The Golden Goose.' The stories include magic, communication between animals and men, and moral values, teachings of social right and wrong. The term 'Hausmärchen' in the title refers to 'Hausmärlein', a term created by Georg Rollenhagen in 1595; 'household tales' were meant to serve as a guide for Christian upbringing.

The brothers are generally treated as a team, though Jacob concentrated on linguistic studies and Wilhelm was primarily a literary scholar. Jacob wrote down most of the tales published in the first volume. From 1819 onward, Wilhelm supervised all subsequent editions on his own, because Jacob was repeatedly away on diplomatic missions. During the editing phase they constantly consulted each other.

The Grimms' were affected by the ideas of Enlightenment and the German Romanticism and its interest in mythology, folklore and dreams. In his masterly guide The March of the Literature (1938) the English writer Ford Madox Ford sees that their work was more than a mere reflection of German romanticism: "But the real apotheosis of this side of the Teutonic cosmos came into its own through the labors of the brothers Ludwig Karl, and Wilhelm Karl Grimm for whom the measure of our administration may well be marked by the fact that there is nothing in the world left to say about their collection of fairy tales. It is, on the whole, wrong to concede the brothers Grimm to the romantics. They belonged to the earth movement and are known wherever the sky covers the land. That is the real German Empire." Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm argued that folktales should be collected from oral sources, which aimed at genuine reproduction of the original story. Their method became model for other scholars. However, in practice the tales were modified. In later editions of the fairytales Wilhelm's editing and literary aspiration were more prominent. He continued to reshape the tales up to the final edition of 1857 – he also removed any hint of sexual activity, such as the premarital couplings of Rapunzel and the prince who climbed into her tower. In 'The Frog Prince, or Iron-Henry' a beautiful princess loses her ball into a well. A frog promises to bring the ball back to her, if she loves the frog, lets it be her companion and play-fellow, and sleep in her bed. Actually the frog is a prince, bewitched by a wicked witch. In spite some changes, the cores of the stories were left untouched.

While collaborating with Jacob was Wilhelm's contribution to science is his collection DIE DEUTSCHE HELDENSAGE (The German Heroic Tale). In 1840 the Brothers Grimm began the Deutsches Wörterbuch, intended as a guide for the user of the written and spoken word as well as a scholarly reference work. Wilhelm's work proceeded to the letter D, Jacob lived to see the work proceed to the letter F.

Both brothers argued that folktales should be recorded and presented in print in a form as close as possible to the original mode. It also meant that some of the stories contained unpleasant details. Doves peck out the eyes of Cinderella's stepsisters, and in 'The Juniper Tree' a woman decapitates her stepson. A witch kills her own daughter in 'Darling Roland.' "These stories are suffused with the same purity that makes children so marvelous and blessed," wrote Wilhelm Grimm in the preface to the Nursery and Household Tales. In practice the brothers modified folktales in varying ways, sometimes even intensifying violent episodes. Especially references to sexuality embarrassed the Grimms'. In 'The Snow White' the violence was toned down by later editions: at the end of the story the wicked Queen is forced to put on red-hot iron slippers and dance till she dies. In 'Hansel and Gretel' the witch ends up in the oven and is baked alive. "Oh, you dear children, who has brought you here? Do come in, and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you." (from 'Hansel and Gretel') In Nazi Germany Little red Riding Hood was turned into a symbol of the German people, saved from the evil Jewish wolf. In the 1970s the tales were scorned for promoting a sexists, authority-ridden world view. The Grimm's tales are in fact much closer to genuine folk origins than Hans Christian Andersen's tales – he is considered the best-known tellers of fairy tales. Their stories have been utilized by many modern fantasists, including Tanith Lee, Robin McKinley, and Patricia Wrede.
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Re: THE PICTORIAL LANGUAGE OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH

Postby admin » Tue Oct 06, 2015 4:15 am

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Brothers Grimm
by Ludwig Denecke

German brothers famous for their classic collections of folk songs and folktales. Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (b. Jan. 4, 1785, Hanau, Hesse-Kassel [Germany]—d. Sept. 20, 1863, Berlin) and Wilhelm Carl Grimm (b. Feb. 24, 1786, Hanau, Hesse-Kassel [Germany]—d. Dec. 16, 1859, Berlin) were best known for Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812–22; also called Grimm’s Fairy Tales), which led to the birth of the science of folklore. Jacob especially did important work in historical linguistics and Germanic philology.

Beginnings and Kassel period

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were the oldest in a family of five brothers and one sister. Their father, Philipp Wilhelm, a lawyer, was town clerk in Hanau and later justiciary in Steinau, another small Hessian town, where his father and grandfather had been ministers of the Calvinistic Reformed Church. The father’s death in 1796 brought social hardships to the family; the death of the mother in 1808 left 23-year-old Jacob with the responsibility of four brothers and one sister. Jacob, a scholarly type, was small and slender with sharply cut features, while Wilhelm was taller, had a softer face, and was sociable and fond of all the arts.

After attending the high school in Kassel, the brothers followed their father’s footsteps and studied law at the University of Marburg (1802–06) with the intention of entering civil service. At Marburg they came under the influence of Clemens Brentano, who awakened in both a love of folk poetry, and Friedrich Karl von Savigny, cofounder of the historical school of jurisprudence, who taught them a method of antiquarian investigation that formed the real basis of all their later work. Others, too, strongly influenced the Grimms, particularly the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), with his ideas on folk poetry. Essentially, they remained individuals, creating their work according to their own principles.

In 1805 Jacob accompanied Savigny to Paris to do research on legal manuscripts of the Middle Ages; the following year he became secretary to the war office in Kassel. Because of his health, Wilhelm remained without regular employment until 1814. After the French entered in 1806, Jacob became private librarian to King Jérôme of Westphalia in 1808 and a year later auditeur of the Conseil d’État but returned to Hessian service in 1813 after Napoleon’s defeat. As secretary to the legation, he went twice to Paris (1814–15), to recover precious books and paintings taken by the French from Hesse and Prussia. He also took part in the Congress of Vienna (September 1814–June 1815). Meantime, Wilhelm had become secretary at the Elector’s library in Kassel (1814), and Jacob joined him there in 1816.

By that time the brothers had definitely given up thoughts of a legal career in favour of purely literary research. In the years to follow they lived frugally and worked steadily, laying the foundations for their lifelong interests. Their whole thinking was rooted in the social and political changes of their time and the challenge these changes held. Jacob and Wilhelm had nothing in common with the fashionable “Gothic” Romanticism of the 18th and 19th centuries. Their state of mind made them more Realists than Romantics. They investigated the distant past and saw in antiquity the foundation of all social institutions of their days. But their efforts to preserve these foundations did not mean that they wanted to return to the past. From the beginning, the Grimms sought to include material from beyond their own frontiers—from the literary traditions of Scandinavia, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, England, Serbia, and Finland.

They first collected folk songs and tales for their friends Achim von Arnim and Brentano, who had collaborated on an influential collection of folk lyrics in 1805, and the brothers examined in some critical essays the essential difference between folk literature and other writing. To them, folk poetry was the only true poetry, expressing the eternal joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears of mankind.

Encouraged by Arnim, they published their collected tales as the Kinder- und Hausmärchen, implying in the title that the stories were meant for adults and children alike. In contrast to the extravagant fantasy of the Romantic school’s poetical fairy tales, the 200 stories of this collection (mostly taken from oral sources, though a few were from printed sources) aimed at conveying the soul, imagination, and beliefs of people through the centuries—or at a genuine reproduction of the teller’s words and ways. The great merit of Wilhelm Grimm is that he gave the fairy tales a readable form without changing their folkloric character. The results were threefold: the collection enjoyed wide distribution in Germany and eventually in all parts of the globe (there are now translations in 70 languages); it became and remains a model for the collecting of folktales everywhere; and the Grimms’ notes to the tales, along with other investigations, formed the basis for the science of the folk narrative and even of folklore. To this day the tales remain the earliest “scientific” collection of folktales.

The Kinder- und Hausmärchen was followed by a collection of historical and local legends of Germany, Deutsche Sagen (1816–18), which never gained wide popular appeal, though it influenced both literature and the study of the folk narrative. The brothers then published (in 1826) a translation of Thomas Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, prefacing the edition with a lengthy introduction of their own on fairy lore. At the same time, the Grimms gave their attention to the written documents of early literature, bringing out new editions of ancient texts, from both the Germanic and other languages. Wilhelm’s outstanding contribution was Die deutsche Heldensage (“The German Heroic Tale”), a collection of themes and names from heroic legends mentioned in literature and art from the 6th to the 16th centuries, together with essays on the art of the saga.

While collaborating on these subjects for two decades (1806–26), Jacob also turned to the study of philology with an extensive work on grammar, the Deutsche Grammatik (1819–37). The word deutsch in the title does not mean strictly “German,” but it rather refers to the etymological meaning of “common,” thus being used to apply to all of the Germanic languages, the historical development of which is traced for the first time. He represented the natural laws of sound change (both vowels and consonants) in various languages and thus created bases for a method of scientific etymology; i.e., research into relationships between languages and development of meaning. In what was to become known as Grimm’s law, Jacob demonstrated the principle of the regularity of correspondence among consonants in genetically related languages, a principle previously observed by the Dane Rasmus Rask. Jacob’s work on grammar exercised an enormous influence on the contemporary study of linguistics, Germanic, Romance, and Slavic, and it remains of value and in use even now. In 1824 Jacob Grimm translated a Serbian grammar by his friend Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, writing an erudite introduction on Slavic languages and literature.

He extended his investigations into the Germanic folk-culture with a study of ancient law practices and beliefs published as Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer (1828), providing systematic source material but excluding actual laws. The work stimulated other publications in France, the Netherlands, Russia, and the southern Slavic countries and has not yet been superseded.

The Göttingen years

The quiet contentment of the years at Kassel ended in 1829, when the brothers suffered a snub—perhaps motivated politically—from the Elector of Hessen-Kassel: they were not given advancement following the death of a senior colleague. Consequently, they moved to the nearby University of Göttingen, where they were appointed librarians and professors. Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, written during this period, was to be of far-reaching influence. From poetry, fairy tales, and folkloristic elements, he traced the pre-Christian faith and superstitions of the Germanic people, contrasting the beliefs to those of classical mythology and Christianity. The Mythologie had many successors all over Europe, but often disciples were not as careful in their judgments as Jacob had been. Wilhelm published here his outstanding edition of Freidank’s epigrams. But again fate overtook them. When Ernest Augustus, duke of Cumberland, became king of Hanover, he high-handedly repealed the constitution of 1833, which he considered too liberal. Two weeks after the King’s declaration, the Grimms, together with five other professors (the “Göttingen Seven”), sent a protest to the King, explaining that they felt themselves bound by oath to the old constitution. As a result they were dismissed, and three professors, including Jacob, were ordered to leave the kingdom of Hanover at once. Through their part in this protest directed against despotic authority, they clearly demonstrated the academic’s sense of civil responsibilities, manifesting their own liberal convictions at the same time. During three years of exile in Kassel, institutions in Germany and beyond (Hamburg, Marburg, Rostock, Weimar, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) tried to obtain the brothers’ services.

The Berlin period

In 1840 they accepted an invitation from the king of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to go to Berlin, where as members of the Royal Academy of Sciences they lectured at the university. There they began work in earnest on their most ambitious enterprise, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, a large German dictionary intended as a guide for the user of the written and spoken word as well as a scholarly reference work. In the dictionary, all German words found in the literature of the three centuries “from Luther to Goethe” were given with their historical variants, their etymology, and their semantic development; their usage in specialized and everyday language was illustrated by quoting idioms and proverbs. Begun as a source of income in 1838 for the brothers after their dismissal from Göttingen, the work required generations of successors to bring the gigantic task to an end more than a hundred years later. Jacob lived to see the work proceed to the letter F, while Wilhelm finished only the letter D. The dictionary became an example for similar publications in other countries: Britain, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. Jacob’s philological research later led to a history of the German language, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, in which he attempted to combine the historical study of language with the study of early history. Research into names and dialects was stimulated by Jacob Grimm’s work, as were ways of writing and spelling—for example, he used roman type and advocated spelling German nouns without capital letters.

For some 20 years they worked in Prussia’s capital, respected and free from financial worries. Much of importance can be found in the brothers’ lectures and essays, the prefaces and reviews (Kleinere Schriften) they wrote in this period. In Berlin they witnessed the Revolution of 1848 and took an active part in the political strife of the succeeding years. In spite of close and even emotional ties to their homeland, the Grimms were not nationalists in the narrow sense. They maintained genuine—even political—friendships with colleagues at home and abroad, among them the jurists Savigny and Eichhorn; the historians F.C. Dahlmann, G.G. Gervinus, and Jules Michelet; and the philologists Karl Lachmann, John Mitchell Kemble, Jan Frans Willems, Vuk Karadžić, and Pavel Josef Šafařik. Nearly all academies in Europe were proud to count Jacob and Wilhelm among their members. The more robust Jacob undertook many journeys for scientific investigations, visiting France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Denmark, and Sweden. Jacob remained a bachelor; Wilhelm married Dorothea Wild from Kassel, with whom he had four children: Jacob (who was born and died in 1826), Herman (literary and art historian, 1828–1901), Rudolf (jurist, 1830–89), and Auguste (1832–1919). The graves of the brothers are in the Matthäikirchhof in Berlin.

Ludwig Denecke
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