Grimms' Fairy Tales (), originally known as the Children's and Household Tales (, , commonly abbreviated as KHM), is a German collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, first published on 20 December 1812. Vol. 1 of the first edition contained 86 stories, which were followed by 70 more tales, numbered consecutively, in the 1st edition, Vol. 2, in 1815. By the seventh edition in 1857, the corpus of tales had expanded to 200 tales and 10 "Children's Legends". It is considered the seminal work of Western children's literature and is listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Register.
Origin
Jacob Grimm began attending the University of Marburg in 1802, and Wilhelm joined him a year later, both studying law. Jacob drew the attention of Professor Friedrich Carl von Savigny, founder of its historical school of law. He became a prominent personal and professional influence on the brothers. Throughout their time at university, the brothers became quite close with Savigny and were able to use his personal library as they became interested in German law, history, and folklore. Savigny asked Jacob to join him in Paris as an assistant, and Jacob went with him for a year. While he was gone, Wilhelm became very interested in German literature and started collecting books. Once Jacob returned to Kassel in 1806, he adopted his brother's passion and changed his focus from law to German literature. While Jacob studied literature and took care of their siblings, Wilhelm continued to complete his degree in law at Marburg. During the Napoleonic Wars, Jacob interrupted his studies to serve the Hessian War Commission.
Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano were good friends of the brothers and wanted to publish folk tales, so they asked the brothers to collect oral tales for publication. The Grimms collected many old books and asked friends and acquaintances in Kassel to tell tales and to gather stories from others. Jacob and Wilhelm sought to collect these stories to write a history of old German literature and to preserve history.
Composition
The first volume of the first edition was published in 1812, containing 86 stories; the second volume of 70 stories followed in 1815. For the second edition, two volumes containing the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM) texts were issued in 1819 and the appendix was removed and published separately in the third volume in 1822, totaling 170 tales. The third edition appeared in 1837, the fourth edition in 1840, the fifth edition in 1843, the sixth edition in 1850, and the seventh edition in 1857. Stories were added, and also removed, from one edition to the next, until the seventh held 210 tales. Some later editions were extensively illustrated, first by Philipp Grot Johann and, after his death in 1892, by German illustrator Anton Robert Leinweber.
The first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales", they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter.Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, p15-17, Many changes through the editions – such as turning the wicked mother of the first edition in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel (shown in original Grimm stories as Hänsel und Grethel) to a stepmother, were probably made with an eye to such suitability. Jack Zipes believes that the Grimms made the change in later editions because they "held motherhood sacred".
They removed sexual references—such as Rapunzel's innocently asking why her dress was getting tight around her belly, and thus naively revealing to the witch Dame Gothel her pregnancy and the prince's visits—but, in many respects, violence, particularly when punishing villains, became more prevalent.Maria Tatar, "Reading the Grimms' Children's Stories and Household Tales" p. xxvii-iv, Maria Tatar, ed. The Annotated Brothers Grimm.,
Popularity The brothers' initial intention of their first book, Children's and Household Tales, was to establish a name for themselves in the world. After publishing the first KHM in 1812, they published a second, augmented and re-edited, volume in 1815. In 1816 Volume I of the German Legends () was published, followed in 1818, Volume II. The book that established their international success was Jacob's German Grammar in 1819. In 1825, the brothers published their Kleine Ausgabe or "small edition", a selection of 50 tales designed for child readers illustrated by Ludwig Emil Grimm. This children's version went through ten editions between 1825 and 1858.
Influence Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children and Household Tales) is listed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Registry.Zipes, Jack. "How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale", Humanities, March/April 2015
The Grimms believed that the most natural and pure forms of culture were linguistic and based in history. Their work influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism, that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, the English Joseph Jacobs, and Jeremiah Curtin, an American who collected Irish tales.Jack Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 846, There was not always a pleased reaction to their collection. Joseph Jacobs was in part inspired by his complaint that English children did not read English fairy tales;Maria Tatar, p 345-5, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, in his own words, "What Perrault began, the Grimms completed".
W. H. Auden praised the collection during World War II as one of the founding works of Western culture.Maria Tatar, "Reading the Grimms' Children's Stories and Household Tales" p. xxx, Maria Tatar, ed. The Annotated Brothers Grimm, The tales themselves have been put to many uses. Adolf Hitler praised them so strongly that the Allies of World War II warned against them, as Hitler thought they were folkish tales showing children with sound racial instincts seeking racially pure marriage partners;Maria Tatar, "-xxxix, Maria Tatar, ed. The Annotated Brothers Grimm, for instance, Cinderella with the heroine as racially pure, the stepmother as an alien, and the prince with an unspoiled instinct being able to distinguish.Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p 77-8 Writers who have written about the Holocaust have combined the tales with their memoirs, as Jane Yolen in her Briar Rose.Maria Tatar, "Reading the Grimms' Fairy Stories and Household Tales" p. xlvi, Maria Tatar, ed. The Annotated Brothers Grimm,
Three individual works of Wilhelm Grimm include Altdänische Heldenlieder, Balladen und Märchen ('Old Danish Heroic Songs, Ballads, and Folktales') in 1811, Über deutsche Runen ('On German Runes') in 1821, and Die deutsche Heldensage ('The German Heroic Saga') in 1829.
The Grimm anthology has been a source of inspiration for artists and composers. Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, and Rie Cramer are among the artists who have created illustrations based on the stories.
English-language collections "Grimms' Fairy Tales in English" by D.L. Ashliman provides a hyperlinked list of 50 to 100 English-language collections that have been digitized and made available online. They were published in print from the 1820s to 1920s. Listings may identify all translators and illustrators who were credited on the title pages, and certainly identify some others.
1812 edition translations These are some translations of the original collection, also known as the first edition of Volume I.
Zipes, Jack, ed., tr. (2014) The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: the complete first edition. Loo, Oliver ed., tr. (2014) The Original 1812 Grimm Fairy Tales. A New Translation of the 1812 First Edition Kinder- und Hausmärchen Collected through the Brothers Grimm
1857 edition translations
These are some translations of the two-volume seventh edition (1857):
Hunt, Margaret, ed., tr. (2014) Grimm's Household Tales, with Author's Notes, 2 vols (1884). Manheim, Ralph, tr. (1977) Grimms' Tales for Young and Old: The Complete Stories. New York: Doubleday. Luke, David; McKay, Gilbert; Schofield, Philip tr. (1982) Brothers Grimm: Selected Tales.
Brief ban in postwar Germany Following WWII, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm were banned in the British Occupation Zone of Germany, as many believed they were the root of German violence.
List
The acronym "KHM" stands for Kinder- und Hausmärchen. The titles are those as of 1857. Some titles in 1812 were different. All editions from 1812 until 1857 split the stories into two volumes.
This section contains 211 listings, as "KHM 1" to "KHM 210" in numerical sequence plus "KHM 151a". The next section "Removed from final edition" contains 30 listings including 18 that are numbered in series "1812 KHM ###" and 12 without any label.
Volume 1
The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich or The Frog Prince (Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich): KHM 1 Cat and Mouse in Partnership (Katze und Maus in Gesellschaft): KHM 2 Mary's Child (Marienkind): KHM 3 The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was (Märchen von einem, der auszog das Fürchten zu lernen): KHM 4 The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids (Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geißlein): KHM 5 Faithful John or Trusty John (Der treue Johannes): KHM 6 The Good Bargain (Der gute Handel): KHM 7 The Wonderful Musician or The Strange Musician (Der wunderliche Spielmann): KHM 8 The Twelve Brothers (Die zwölf Brüder): KHM 9 The Pack of Ragamuffins (Das Lumpengesindel): KHM 10 Little Brother and Little Sister (Brüderchen und Schwesterchen): KHM 11 Rapunzel: KHM 12 The Three Little Men in the Wood (Die drei Männlein im Walde): KHM 13 The Three Spinning Women (Die drei Spinnerinnen): KHM 14 Hansel and Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel): KHM 15 The Three Snake-Leaves (Die drei Schlangenblätter): KHM 16 The White Snake (Die weiße Schlange): KHM 17 The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean (Strohhalm, Kohle und Bohne): KHM 18 The Fisherman and His Wife (Von dem Fischer und seiner Frau): KHM 19 The Brave Little Tailor or The Valiant Little Tailor or The Gallant Tailor (Das tapfere Schneiderlein): KHM 20 Cinderella (Aschenputtel): KHM 21 The Riddle (Das Rätsel): KHM 22 The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage (Von dem Mäuschen, Vögelchen und der Bratwurst): KHM 23 Mother Holle or Mother Hulda or Old Mother Frost (Frau Holle): KHM 24 The Seven Ravens (Die sieben Raben): KHM 25 Little Red Cap or Little Red Riding Hood (Rotkäppchen): KHM 26 The Bremen Town Musicians (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten): KHM 27 The Singing Bone (Der singende Knochen): KHM 28 The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs (Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren): KHM 29 The Louse and the Flea (Läuschen und Flöhchen): KHM 30 The Girl Without Hands or The Handless Maiden (Das Mädchen ohne Hände): KHM 31 Clever Hans (Der gescheite Hans): KHM 32 The Three Languages (Die drei Sprachen): KHM 33 Clever Elsie (Die kluge Else): KHM 34 The Tailor in Heaven (Der Schneider im Himmel): KHM 35 The Magic Table, the Gold-Donkey, and the Club in the Sack ("Tischchen deck dich, Goldesel und Knüppel aus dem Sack" also known as "Tischlein, deck dich!"): KHM 36 Thumbling (Daumesdick) (see also Tom Thumb): KHM 37 The Wedding of Mrs. Fox (Die Hochzeit der Frau Füchsin): KHM 38 The Elves (Die Wichtelmänner): KHM 39 The Elves and the Shoemaker (Erstes Märchen) Second Story (Zweites Märchen) Third Story (Drittes Märchen) The Robber Bridegroom (Der Räuberbräutigam): KHM 40 Herr Korbes: KHM 41 The Godfather (Der Herr Gevatter): KHM 42 Mother Trudy (Frau Trude): KHM 43 Godfather Death (Der Gevatter Tod): KHM 44 Thumbling's Travels (see also Tom Thumb) (Daumerlings Wanderschaft): KHM 45