Brothers Grimm Trivia
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47 free Brothers Grimm trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Brothers Grimm trivia quiz covers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the German scholars behind Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin as most of the world knows them. The easy questions cover the brothers' first names, their nationality, the title of the collection, the most famous tales and the Disney films built on them. From there it moves through the biography: the father who died when Jacob was eleven, the poverty at Marburg, the law professor who pointed them at folklore, the librarian jobs, the storytellers who were not peasants at all, and the day seven Göttingen professors refused to swear an oath. The harder end covers the 86 tales of 1812 and the 211 of 1857, the Ölenberg manuscript found in an Alsace church, Rapunzel's censored pregnancy, the red-hot iron shoes, the frog that was thrown rather than kissed, the Deutsches Wörterbuch that took until 1960 to finish, and the last word Jacob reached. Every answer was checked against the Brothers Grimm encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our fairy tales and Disney quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cinderella's slipper is glass in the French tale, but what is it made of in the Grimms' version?
Gold
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.
Q 02In which town near Frankfurt were the Grimm brothers born?
Hanau
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.
Q 03What is the German title of the Grimms' famous collection, first published in 1812?
Kinder- und Hausmärchen
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.
Q 04Who, rather than peasants, told the Grimms most of their first-edition tales?
Educated friends
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.
Q 05Before folklore took over, which subject did both Grimm brothers go to university to study?
Law
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.
Q 06How does Rumpelstiltskin meet his end in the Grimms' final version of the tale?
He tears himself in two
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.
Q 07At which Hessian university did Jacob enrol in 1802, with Wilhelm following a year later?
Marburg
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.
Q 08In the Grimms' 'Town Musicians of Bremen', which animal stands at the bottom of the four-animal stack?
Donkey
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.
Q 09How do the Grimms rescue Little Red Riding Hood after the wolf eats her?
A huntsman cuts the wolf open
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.
Q 10Which 1808 job gave Jacob Grimm time for his research?
Court librarian to the King of Westphalia
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.
Q 11What did the poet Clemens Brentano do with the tales the Grimms sent him?
Ignored them
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.
Q 12In 'Hansel and Gretel', what does the caged Hansel hold out so the weak-eyed witch thinks he is still thin?
A little bone
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.
Q 13After Wilhelm Grimm married, where did his brother Jacob make his home?
Q 21How does the queen die at the end of the Grimms' 'Snow White'?
Dancing in red-hot iron shoes
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.
Q 22In the Grimms' 'Frog Prince', what does the princess do to the frog instead of kissing him?
Throws him against a wall
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.
Q 23How is the false bride put to death in the Grimms' 'The Goose Girl'?
With the newly married couple
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.
Q 14Under what title does the story of Sleeping Beauty appear in the Grimms' collection?
Little Briar Rose
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.
Q 15In the Grimms' tale, Rapunzel is named after what kind of thing growing in the sorceress's garden?
A salad plant
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.
Q 16Grimm informants such as Marie Hassenpflug were of what ancestry, explaining the French flavour of some tales?
Huguenot
They probably knew the French salon tales published in Paris in 1697.
Q 17With no fairy godmother in the Grimms' 'Cinderella', what grants the heroine her wishes?
A tree on her mother's grave
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.
Q 18What did Wilhelm edit out of 'Rapunzel' after the first edition?
The sexual relationship between prince and girl
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.
Q 19In later editions of the Grimms' 'Sleeping Beauty', the French-sounding fairies were renamed as what?
Wise women
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.
Q 20In the Grimms' original 'Snow White', who orders the huntsman to kill the girl?
Her own mother
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.
Dragged in a barrel of nails
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.
Q 24In the Grimms' 'The Brave Little Tailor', the boast 'seven at one blow' refers to killing seven what?
Flies
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.
Q 25What do the shoemaker's elves do after the couple give them tiny clothes?
Dance away and never return
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.
Q 26In the Grimms' 'Snow White', what revives the heroine, since no kiss is involved?
A stumble jolts the apple loose
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.
Q 27Why did the Grimms quit their Kassel library jobs in 1829?
A denied promotion
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.
Q 28After Napoleon's defeat, which great peace conference did Jacob Grimm attend as a Hessian diplomat's secretary?
The Congress of Vienna
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.
Q 29Why were the Grimms fired from their professorships in 1837?
Protesting the king's repeal of the constitution
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.
Q 30What name was given to the group of professors, including the Grimms, dismissed in 1837?
The Göttingen Seven
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.