Gebrüder Grimm

Two brothers went looking for a language and found a forest full of stories. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm worked as librarians, philologists, editors, and professors. Their Children’s and Household Tales began appearing in 1812 and changed repeatedly across later editions; beside the tales stand foundational studies of German language and literature and the vast German Dictionary they began but did not live to finish. In Göttingen they joined five other professors in protesting the king of Hanover’s revocation of the constitution and lost their posts. The fairy tales made them household names. The scholarship explains why every repeated word mattered.