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The Heroic Industry of the Brothers Grimm

—“Hänsel and Grethel” In an 1846 letter to the Athenaeum, English writer William Thoms coined a term, “folklore.” He wondered whether some new scholar might do for British culture what Jacob Grimm had done for German. Jacob was the more prominent of the Grimms, but his life and work were inconceivable without the companionship and contributions of his younger brother, Wilhelm.

In 2005, Schmiesing reports, Children’s and Household Tales was named “a UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ heritage document.” I find it as hard to conceive of a life without these stories as I do a literature without the Iliad and the Odyssey. There, by the large German stove, Jacob recalled her washing him with warm water to which she added a splash of wine.” Schmiesing, a professor and administrator at the University of Colorado Boulder, has researched her subject deeply and makes vivid use of original documents such as letters, diaries and memoirs left by the brothers. Wilhelm’s desk sported a petrified fish, a piece of feldspar, a female figurine from the second century BCE, a green statuette of an Egyptian king, and a centuries-old carved sandstone sculpture of a man’s head.

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