Jacob Grimm

Biography

Jacob Grimm was a German folklorist, linguist, and philologist. He and his younger brother Wilhelm Grimm (1786 - 1859) co-operated in collecting, compiling, and revising German folk tales into "Grimms' Fairy Tales" (1812). By its final revised edition in 1857, the collection included 210 unique fairy tales. Grimm also published the historical treatise "Teutonic Mythology" (Deutsche Mythologie, 1835) on Germanic mythology and its impact in modern German folk culture. He spend his last years working on "The German Dictionary" (Deutsches Wörterbuch), the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of High German. It was left unfinished with his death, but was expanded and finished by other scholars. Its first complete edition was published in 1961, nearly a century after Grimm's death. In 1785, Grimm was born in Hanau, Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. His father was the lawyer Philipp Grimm (d. 1796). His father died when Grimm was 11-years-old, severely reducing the Grimm family's income and social status. However, Jacob received financial help from a maternal aunt who served as a lady of the chamber to the Landgravine of Hesse. Grimm was educated at public schools, and enrolled at the University of Marburg in 1802. He was initially only interested in studying law, but he was impressed with the lectures of the historian Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779 -1861). Savigny awakened in Jacob a love for historical and antiquarian research, and allowed the young man to study Middle High German texts from his personal library. In 1805, Grimm joined his mentor Savigny in his work at Paris, where he took time to study available medieval texts. In 1806, Grimm found a new job, working in the war office at Kassel. His salary was meager, but provided him with enough free time to pursue his own interests. In 1808, Grimm was appointed superintendent of the private library of Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia (1784-1860, reigned 1807-1813). He also as an auditor to the state council. His combined salary for these two positions were 4000 francs. Following Jerome's deposition, Grimm served as Secretary of Legation in Hesse-Kassel. He spend a few years trying to claim restitutions of books from Kassel that had been taken by the French Army. In 1816, Grimm was appointed as the second librarian at the Kassel library, second-in-command for this department. He worked closely with his brother Wilhelm, who was also employed as a librarian at this library. In 1828, the chief librarian died. Both brothers were nominated for promotion, but were disappointed when the vacant seat was occupied by another candidate. In 1829, the frustrated Jacob accepted an offer to work as both a professor and a librarian at the University of Göttingen. He lectured on legal history, historical grammar, literary history, and diplomatics. He also provided commentaries on Old German poetry and the "Germania" of Tacitus, one of the oldest surviving works on Germanic history and culture. In 1837, Jacob and Grimm were both included in the Göttingen Seven, academics who protested against the planned abolition of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover by the new monarch, Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover (1771-1851, reigned 1837-1851). The academics were all fired by the king, and the Grimm Brothers were exiled. The brothers spend a few years under reduced circumstances in Kassel. In 1840, Grimm was appointed a professor at the University of Berlin, after accepting an offer of employment Frederick William IV of Prussia (1795-1861, reigned 1840-1861). By the terms of his employment, he was not actually obligated to lecture students. He chose to only lecture on occasion, devoting much of his time to compiling more literary works. Grimm died in September 1863, while still working in Berlin. He was 78-years-old at the time of his death. He had never married and had no known descendants. His legacy includes a large influence on several fields of scholarship, and frequent adaptations of his fairy tales over the following centuries. He is the originator of "Grimm's law" in linguistics, which is used in the study of the Proto-Indo-European language.