47 Fun Facts About Brothers Grimm

Cinderella's slipper is glass in the French tale, but what is it made of in the Grimms' version?

Gold, and the prince smears the palace stairs with pitch so the shoe sticks fast as she flees. Each stepsister then slices off part of her foot to squeeze into it.

In which town near Frankfurt were the Grimm brothers born?

Hanau was home only until Jacob was six, when the family moved to Steinau. Today it is the starting point of the 600 km German Fairy Tale Route, which ends in Bremen.

What is the German title of the Grimms' famous collection, first published in 1812?

Kinder- und Hausmärchen means Children's and Household Tales, yet the 1812 first edition was a scholarly anthology with learned notes, compiled for adults rather than for bedtime reading.

Who, rather than peasants, told the Grimms most of their first-edition tales?

Educated friends and acquaintances, most of them women, told the brothers their tales in person. Many had first heard the stories from unlettered tellers whose names were never recorded.

Before folklore took over, which subject did both Grimm brothers go to university to study?

Law was their late father's career, and both sons meant to follow him into the civil service. Instead a law professor's method of tracing old texts back to their origins became the basis of all their later work.

How does Rumpelstiltskin meet his end in the Grimms' final version of the tale?

He tears himself in two, after stamping one foot so deep into the ground that he sinks to his waist. In the 1812 first edition he simply ran away angrily and never came back.

At which Hessian university did Jacob enrol in 1802, with Wilhelm following a year later?

Marburg shut the fatherless brothers out of the tuition aid that wealthier students received. Jacob later wrote that such sparseness spurs a person to industriousness and work.

In the Grimms' 'Town Musicians of Bremen', which animal stands at the bottom of the four-animal stack?

Donkey, with the dog, cat and rooster stacked on his back, leads the din that scares robbers out of a cottage. Despite the title, the four settle there and never reach Bremen.

How do the Grimms rescue Little Red Riding Hood after the wolf eats her?

A huntsman cuts the wolf open with scissors, and girl and grandmother climb out alive. In the older French tale there is no rescue at all: the story ends with her eaten.

Which 1808 job gave Jacob Grimm time for his research?

Court librarian to the King of Westphalia meant serving Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, whom the French had installed in Kassel. The future champion of German folk tales stayed on a Bonaparte's payroll until Napoleon's defeat in 1813.

What did the poet Clemens Brentano do with the tales the Grimms sent him?

Ignored them is the short of it: Brentano left the manuscript at a monastery in Alsace and never used a single tale. The brothers had kept a copy, and his neglect freed them to publish the tales themselves.

In 'Hansel and Gretel', what does the caged Hansel hold out so the weak-eyed witch thinks he is still thin?

A little bone fools her for four weeks, because the tale says witches have red eyes and cannot see far. Out of patience, she fires up the oven anyway, and Gretel shoves her in.

After Wilhelm Grimm married, where did his brother Jacob make his home?

With the newly married couple: Jacob never married and shared their home for the rest of his life. The bride, Dortchen Wild, was a childhood friend who had told the brothers several of their tales.

Under what title does the story of Sleeping Beauty appear in the Grimms' collection?

Little Briar Rose sleeps behind a thorn hedge that swallows her castle and traps every prince who tries to push through. When the hundred years end, the thorns turn to flowers and part by themselves.

In the Grimms' tale, Rapunzel is named after what kind of thing growing in the sorceress's garden?

A salad plant called rapunzel is what her pregnant mother craved so badly that the father stole it twice. Caught on the second raid, he bought his freedom by promising the sorceress the unborn child.

Grimm informants such as Marie Hassenpflug were of what ancestry, explaining the French flavour of some tales?

They probably knew the French salon tales published in Paris in 1697.

With no fairy godmother in the Grimms' 'Cinderella', what grants the heroine her wishes?

A tree on her mother's grave, grown from a hazel twig she watered with her tears, does the godmother's work. A white bird in its branches throws down whatever she wishes for, ball gowns included.

What did Wilhelm edit out of 'Rapunzel' after the first edition?

The sexual relationship between prince and girl slipped out in 1812 when Rapunzel asked why her clothes had grown too tight. Wilhelm swapped that for a remark that the enchantress is harder to pull up than the prince.

In later editions of the Grimms' 'Sleeping Beauty', the French-sounding fairies were renamed as what?

Wise women replaced the fairies because the German word Fee was a French loan, and the brothers wanted the tales to sound home-grown. For the same reason every Prinz became a Königssohn, a king's son.

In the Grimms' original 'Snow White', who orders the huntsman to kill the girl?

Her own mother is the jealous queen of the 1812 first edition, who demands the girl's lungs and liver and eats what the huntsman brings her, boiled with salt. Later editions quietly recast her as a stepmother.

How does the queen die at the end of the Grimms' 'Snow White'?

Dancing in red-hot iron shoes is the queen's punishment at Snow White's wedding feast. The shoes are heated in burning coals, carried in with tongs, and she must dance in them until she drops dead.

In the Grimms' 'Frog Prince', what does the princess do to the frog instead of kissing him?

Throws him against a wall, furious that he wants to share her bed, and he lands as a prince. His servant Heinrich had clamped three iron bands round his own heart to stop it breaking with grief, and they now snap with joy.

How is the false bride put to death in the Grimms' 'The Goose Girl'?

Dragged in a barrel of nails is the sentence the false bride passes on herself, when the old king asks what such a traitor deserves. Two white horses pull the barrel through the streets until she is dead.

In the Grimms' 'The Brave Little Tailor', the boast 'seven at one blow' refers to killing seven what?

Flies, swatted on his bread and jam, are all the tailor has killed, but he stitches the boast onto a belt. Everyone he meets assumes it means seven men, and the bluff carries him all the way to a throne.

What do the shoemaker's elves do after the couple give them tiny clothes?

Dance away and never return: the two little men had worked naked, and once dressed they sing that such fine boys need cobble no more. The gift meant as thanks ends the help, yet the shoemaker prospers anyway.

In the Grimms' 'Snow White', what revives the heroine, since no kiss is involved?

A stumble jolts the apple loose: the prince has talked the dwarfs into giving him the glass coffin, and a servant carrying it trips on some brush. The poisoned bite pops out of her throat and she sits up alive.

Why did the Grimms quit their Kassel library jobs in 1829?

A denied promotion ended their quiet years in Kassel: when a senior librarian died in 1829, the Elector gave neither brother the step up. Both resigned, and a nearby university made them professors.

After Napoleon's defeat, which great peace conference did Jacob Grimm attend as a Hessian diplomat's secretary?

The Congress of Vienna had Jacob as secretary to the Hessian delegation, a rare outing into diplomacy. In the same years he was sent to Paris twice to reclaim books and manuscripts the French had carried off.

Why were the Grimms fired from their professorships in 1837?

Protesting the king's repeal of the constitution cost them their chairs: Ernest Augustus of Hanover had scrapped the liberal charter, and the professors said their oath bound them to it. Jacob was ordered out of the kingdom at once.

What name was given to the group of professors, including the Grimms, dismissed in 1837?

The Göttingen Seven lost their posts but gained admirers. During the brothers' three years of exile in Kassel, institutions from Hamburg to Switzerland tried to hire them.

What lifelong project did the jobless Grimm brothers begin in 1838?

A definitive German dictionary began as paid work after their dismissal and set out to trace the history of every word. The brothers reached only the letter F, and later scholars needed another century to finish it.

In the Grimms' 'Fisherman and His Wife', where does the greedy wife end up after her last wish?

Back in their shack: the enchanted flounder had already made her king, emperor and pope. When she demands to be like God and make the sun and moon rise, every gift vanishes.

In the Grimms' 'Mother Holle', what happens in the world when the old woman's featherbed is shaken?

It snows on earth whenever her feathers fly, and people in Hesse said Mother Holle was making her bed when flakes fell. The lazy girl who shirks the chore goes home coated in pitch that never comes off.

In the Grimms' 'The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids', where does the youngest kid hide and escape being eaten?

In the clock case, the one place the wolf never looks, the youngest survives to tell his mother. She swaps stones for the six kids in the sleeping wolf's belly, and their weight drags him into the well.

After the revolutions of 1848, Jacob Grimm was elected to which body?

The Frankfurt Parliament met in 1848 to write a constitution for a united Germany. Disappointed by its slow progress, Jacob gave up his seat that October.

In the Grimms' Pied Piper legend, where do Hamelin's children vanish?

Into a mountain they vanished, the legend says, and the lane they left by was named the drumless street. No music was allowed there, and even wedding processions had to pass through in silence.

In 1826 the Grimms translated a new book of fairy legends from which country?

Ireland's fairy legends, collected by Thomas Crofton Croker, had appeared in London only a year earlier. The brothers had a German edition out within a year and prefaced it with a long essay of their own on fairy lore.

Which French author's 1697 Mother Goose tales resurfaced in the Grimms' first collection?

Charles Perrault was a former royal official of nearly 70 when he reworked old folk tales into his Mother Goose book. Storytellers later passed his versions to the Grimms, so several of their 'German' tales began in a French storybook.

In the Grimms' 'The Six Swans', what must the sister do for six years to free her enchanted brothers?

Neither speak nor laugh, while sewing six shirts from flowers. She stays silent even when sentenced to burn as a witch, and the last shirt lacks a sleeve, so her youngest brother keeps a swan's wing.

In German-speaking lands, the Grimms' tales are said to be second in popularity only to which book?

The Bible alone is said to outrank the tales in German-speaking lands. The first edition was a scholars' book, but Wilhelm kept reworking the stories across later editions to win a wider and younger audience.

Bruno Bettelheim's 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment read the Grimms' tales through whose theories?

Sigmund Freud's ideas underpin Bettelheim's claim that gruesome tales are good for children. A child can pin forbidden feelings on a witch or wicked stepmother, watch her defeated, and so learn to master them.

Disney called them Grumpy, Dopey and so on; what are the seven dwarfs called in the Grimms' tale?

They have no names in the Grimms' text and act as one, but they do more than Disney's seven. Twice they revive Snow White, from a suffocating bodice lace and a poisoned comb, before the apple defeats them.

In Terry Gilliam's 2005 film The Brothers Grimm, Matt Damon plays Wilhelm; who plays his brother Jacob?

Heath Ledger plays Jacob as the dreamer who half believes in magic, while Damon's Wilhelm is the cynic. The film turns the scholars into con artists staging fake hauntings, until they meet a real curse.

The Grimm-Zentrum, named for the brothers, is the library of which institution?

Humboldt University of Berlin, then simply the University of Berlin, is where the brothers lectured after the Prussian king invited them in 1840. Its central library has carried their names since it opened in 2009.

Before the famous breadcrumbs fail, what does Hansel drop that does lead the children home?

White pebbles, gathered by moonlight, shine like coins and guide the pair home the first time. On the second night the door is locked, so Hansel can only crumble his bread, and the birds eat every crumb.

In the Grimms' 'Godfather Death', what do the candles burning in Death's cave stand for?

Human lives burn there as candles, tall for children and stubs for the old. The physician godson had cheated Death by turning a sickbed around, so Death lets his little stub fall and go out.

In the Grimms' 'Twelve Dancing Princesses', what gift from an old woman lets a poor soldier solve the mystery?

An invisibility cloak lets him follow the princesses underground, where they dance their shoes to pieces every night. She also warns him off the drugged wine that put earlier suitors to sleep and cost them their heads.