Jacob Grimm
Encyclopedia
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (also Karl; 4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863) was a German
philologist, jurist
and mythologist
. He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law
, the author (with his brother
) of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch
, the author of Deutsche Mythologie
and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm
, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales
.
, in Hesse-Kassel
(or Hesse-Cassel). His father, who was a lawyer
, died while he was a child, and his mother was left with very small means; but her sister, who was lady of the chamber
to the Landgravine of Hesse
, helped to support and educate her numerous family. Jacob, with his younger brother Wilhelm
(born on 24 February 1786), was sent in 1798 to the public school at Kassel
.
In 1802 he proceeded to the University of Marburg, where he studied law
, a profession for which he had been destined by his father. His brother joined him at Marburg a year later, having just recovered from a long and severe illness, and likewise began the study of law.
Up to this time Jacob Grimm had been actuated only by a general thirst for knowledge and his energies had not found any aim beyond the practical one of making himself a position in life. The first definite impulse came from the lectures of Friedrich Karl von Savigny, the celebrated investigator of Roman law
, who, as Wilhelm Grimm himself says in the preface to the Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar), first taught him to realize what it meant to study any science. Savigny's lectures also awakened in him a love for historical
and antiquarian
investigation, which forms the structure of all his work. The two men became personally acquainted, and it was in Savigny's well-stocked library that Grimm first turned over the leaves of Bodmer
's edition of the Old German
minnesingers and other early texts, and felt an eager desire to penetrate further into the obscurities and half-revealed mysteries of their language.
In the beginning of 1805 he received an invitation from Savigny, who had moved to Paris, to help him in his literary work. Grimm passed a very happy time in Paris, strengthening his taste for the literatures of the Middle Ages
by his studies in the Paris libraries. Towards the close of the year he returned to Kassel, where his mother and Wilhelm had settled, the latter having finished his studies. The next year he obtained a position in the war office with the very small salary of 100 thalers. One of his grievances was that he had to exchange his stylish Paris suit for a stiff uniform and pigtail. But he had full leisure for the prosecution of his studies.
In 1808, soon after the death of his mother, he was appointed superintendent of the private library of Jérôme Bonaparte
, King of Westphalia
, into which Hesse-Kassel
had been incorporated by Napoleon. Jerome appointed him an auditor to the state council, while he retained his other post. His salary was increased in a short interval from 2000 to 4000 francs, and his official duties were hardly more than nominal. After the expulsion of Jerome and the reinstalment of an elector, Grimm was appointed in 1813 secretary of legation, to accompany the Hessian minister to the headquarters of the allied army. In 1814 he was sent to Paris to demand restitution of the books carried off by the French, and in 1814–1815 he attended the Congress of Vienna
as secretary of legation. On his return he was again sent to Paris on the same errand as before.
Meanwhile Wilhelm had received an appointment in the Kassel library
, and in 1816 Jacob was made second librarian under Volkel. Upon the death of Volkel in 1828, the brothers expected to be advanced to the first and second librarianships respectively, and were dissatisfied when the first place was given to Rommel, the keeper of the archives. Consequently, they moved next year to Göttingen where Jacob received the appointment of professor and librarian, and Wilhelm that of under-librarian. Jacob Grimm lectured on legal antiquities, historical grammar
, literary history, and diplomatics
, explained Old German poems, and commented on the Germania
of Tacitus
.
At this period he is described as small and lively in figure, with a harsh voice, speaking a broad Hessian dialect. His powerful memory enabled him to dispense with the manuscript on which most German professors relied, and he spoke extemporaneously, referring only occasionally to a few names and dates written on a slip of paper. He regretted that he had begun the work of teaching so late in life, but as a lecturer he was not successful: he had no aptitude for digesting facts and suiting them to the level of comprehension of his students. Even the brilliant, terse, and eloquent passages in his writings lost much of their effect when jerked out in the midst of a long array of dry facts.
In 1837, having been one of the seven professors
who signed a protest against the King of Hanover
's abrogation of the constitution established some years before, he was dismissed from his professorship and banished from the kingdom of Hanover. He returned to Kassel with his brother who had also signed the protest. They remained there until 1840 when they accepted an invitation from the King of Prussia
to move to Berlin, where they both received professorships and were elected members of the Academy of Sciences. Not being under any obligation to lecture, Jacob seldom did so, but together with his brother worked at their great dictionary. During their time in Kassel, Jacob regularly attended the meetings of the academy where he read papers on the most varied subjects. The most well known are those on Lachmann, Schiller
, his brother Wilhelm, old age, and on the origin of language. He also described his impressions of Italian and Scandinavian travel, interspersing his more general observations with linguistic details, as is the case in all his works.
Grimm died in Berlin at the age of 78, working even at the end.
He was never seriously ill, and worked all day without haste and without pause. He was not at all impatient of interruption, but seemed rather to be refreshed by it, returning to his work without effort. He wrote for the press with great rapidity, and hardly ever made corrections. He never revised what he had written, remarking with a certain wonder on his brother, Wilhelm, who read his own manuscripts over again before sending them to press. His temperament was uniformly cheerful and he was easily amused. Outside his own special work he had a marked taste for botany
. The spirit that animated his work is best described by himself at the end of his autobiography:
without being able to discover them, and indeed even in the first edition of his grammar (1819) he seemed to be often groping in the dark. As early as 1815 we find August Wilhelm von Schlegel
reviewing the Altdeutsche Wälder (a periodical published by the two brothers) very severely, condemning the lawless etymological combinations it contained, and insisting on the necessity of strict philological
method and a fundamental investigation of the laws of language, especially in the correspondence of sounds. This criticism is said to have had a considerable influence on the direction of Grimm's studies.
Grimm's scientific character is notable for its combination of breadth and unity. He was as far removed from the narrowness of the specialist who has no ideas or sympathies beyond just one author or corner of science as he was from the shallow dabbler who feverishly attempts to master the details of a half-dozen unrelated pursuits. The same concentration exists within his own special studies. The very foundations of his nature were harmonious; his patriotism and love of historical investigation received their fullest satisfaction in the study of the language, traditions, mythology, laws and literature of his own countrymen and their kin. But from this centre, he pursued his investigations in every direction as far as his instinct allowed. He was equally fortunate in the harmony that existed between his intellectual and moral nature. He cheerfully made the heavy sacrifices that science demands from its disciples, without envy or bitterness; although he lived apart from his fellow men, he was full of human sympathies, and has had a profound influence on the destiny of mankind.
, Thracia
ns, Scythia
ns, and many other nations whose languages were at the time known only through doubtfully identified, often extremely corrupted remains preserved by Greek and Latin authors. Grimm's results have been greatly modified by the wider range of comparison and improved methods of investigation that now characterize linguistics, and many questions he raised will probably remain obscure, but his book's influence has been profound.
by the beginning of the 18th century in his Thesaurus. Ten Kate
in Holland had afterwards made valuable contributions to the history and comparison of the Germanic languages. Even Grimm himself did not at first intend to include all the languages in his Grammar, but he soon found that Old High German
postulated Gothic
, and that the later stages of German could not be understood without the help of other West Germanic
varieties including English, and that the rich literature of Scandinavia could not be ignored either. The first edition of the first part of the Grammar (which appeared in 1819), and is now extremely rare, treated of the inflections of all these languages, and included a general introduction, in which he vindicated the importance of an historical study of the German language against the a priori
, quasi-philosophical methods then in vogue.
In 1822 this volume appeared in a second edition (really a new work, for, as Grimm himself says in the preface, it cost him little reflection to mow down the first crop to the ground). The wide distance between the two stages of Grimm's development in these two editions is significantly shown by the fact that while the first edition gives only the inflections, in the second volume phonology takes up no fewer than 600 pages, more than half of the whole volume. Grimm had, at last, awakened to the full conviction that all sound philology must be based on rigorous adhesion to the laws of sound change
, and he never afterwards swerved from this principle, which gave to all his investigations, even in their boldest flights, that iron-bound consistency, and that force of conviction that distinguishes science from dilettanteism. Prior to Grimm's time, philology was nothing but a more or less laborious and conscientious dilettanteism, with occasional flashes of scientific inspiration.
His advances must be attributed mainly to the influence of his contemporary Rasmus Christian Rask
. Rask was born two years later than Grimm, but his remarkable precocity gave him something of a head start. In Grimm's first editions, his Icelandic paradigms are based entirely on Rask's grammar, and in his second edition, he relied almost entirely on Rask for Old English. His debt to Rask can be appreciated only by comparing his treatment of Old English
in the two editions; the difference is very great. For example, in the first edition he declines disg, dceges, plural dcegas, without having observed the law of vowel-change
pointed out by Rask. There can be little doubt that the appearance of Rask's Old English grammar was the primary impetus for Grimm to recast his work from the beginning. To Rask also belongs the merit of having first distinctly formulated the laws of sound-correspondence in the different languages, especially in the vowels (those more fleeting elements of speech previously ignored by etymologists).
The Grammar was continued in three volumes, treating principally derivation, composition and syntax
, the last of which was unfinished. Grimm then began a third edition, of which only one part, comprising the vowels, appeared in 1840, his time being afterwards taken up mainly by the dictionary. The Grammar stands alone in the annals of science for its comprehensiveness, method and fullness of detail. Every law, every letter, every syllable of inflection in the different languages was illustrated by an almost exhaustive mass of material, and it has served as a model for all succeeding investigators. Diez
's grammar of the Romance languages is founded entirely on its methods, which have also exerted a profound influence on the wider study of the Indo-European languages
in general.
. It was a turning point in the development of linguistics, allowing the introduction of a rigorous methodology to historic linguistic research. It concerns the correspondence of consonants in the older Indo-European, and Low Saxon
and High German languages
, and was first fully stated by Grimm in the second edition of the first part of his grammar. The correspondence of single consonants had been more or less clearly recognized by several of his predecessors including Friedrich von Schlegel, Rasmus Christian Rask and Johan Ihre
, the last having established a considerable number of literarum permutationes, such as b for f, with the examples bœra = ferre, befwer = fiber. Rask, in his essay on the origin of the Icelandic language
, gave the same comparisons, with a few additions and corrections, and even the very same examples in most cases. As Grimm in the preface to his first edition expressly mentioned this essay of Rask, there is every probability that it inspired his own investigations. But there is a wide difference between the isolated permutations of his predecessors and his own comprehensive generalizations. The extension of the law to High German is entirely his own work, however.
The only fact that can be adduced in support of the assertion that Grimm wished to deprive Rask of his claims to priority is that he does not expressly mention Rask's results in his second edition. But this is part of the plan of his work, to refrain from all controversy or reference to the works of others. In his first edition he expressly calls attention to Rask's essay, and praises it most ungrudgingly. It is true that a certain bitterness of feeling afterwards sprang up between Grimm and Rask, but this may have well been the fault of the latter, who, impatient of contradiction and irritable in controversy, refused to play with the value of Grimm's views when they involved modification of his own.
, the Deutsches Wörterbuch
, remains a standard work of reference to the present day.
The dictionary was undertaken on so large a scale as to make it impossible for him and his brother to complete it themselves. The dictionary, as far as it was worked on by Grimm himself, has been described as a collection of disconnected antiquarian essays of high value.
and Meistersang were really one form of poetry, of which they merely represented different stages of development, and also announced his important discovery of the invariable division of the Lied into three strophic parts.
Grimm's text-editions were mostly prepared in conjunction with his brother. In 1812 they published the two ancient fragments of the Hildebrandslied and the Weissenbrunner Gehet, Jacob having discovered what till then had never been suspected—namely the alliteration
in these poems. However, Jacob had little taste for text editing, and, as he himself confessed, working on a critical text gave him little pleasure. He therefore left this department to others, especially Lachmann, who soon turned his brilliant critical genius, trained in the severe school of classical philology, to Old and Middle High German
poetry and metre.
Both Brothers were attracted from the beginning by all national poetry, whether in the form of epics, ballads or popular tales. They published In 1816–1818 a collection of legends culled from diverse sources and published the two-volume Deutsche Sagen (German Legends). At the same time they collected all the folktales they could find, partly from the mouths of the people, partly from manuscripts and books, and published in 1812–1815 the first edition of those Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), which has carried the name of the brothers Grimm into every household of the western world. The closely related subject of the satirical beast epic of the Middle Ages
also held great charm for Jacob Grimm, and he published an edition of the Rejnhart Fuchs in 1834. His first contribution to mythology was the first volume of an edition of the Edda
ic songs, undertaken jointly with his brother, and published in 1815. However, this work was not followed by any others on the subject.
The first edition of his Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology) appeared in 1835. This great work covered the whole range of the subject, tracing the mythology and superstitions of the old Teutons
back to the very dawn of direct evidence, and following their evolution to modern-day popular traditions, tales and expressions.
. In the German revolution of 1848, he was given a chance to make these views known when he was elected to the Frankfurt National Parliament
. The people of Germany had demanded a constitution, so the Parliament, formed of elected members from various German states, met to form one. Grimm was selected for the office in a large part because of his part in the University of Goettingen's refusal to swear to the king of Hanover expounded upon above. He then went to Frankfurt, where he did not play a big part, but did make some speeches, which tended to stray into the realms of history and philology
rather than whatever political question was at hand. Grimm was adamant on one subject, however; he wanted the Danish duchy of Holstein
to be under German control. He talked passionately on this subject, which showed his fierce German nationalism
.
Grimm was not made to be a politician, and also soon realized that the National Assembly was not getting anywhere (it was eventually dissolved without establishing a constitution), and so asked to be released from his duties and returned with relief to his former studies. His political career did not bloom into anything great, but it does illustrate his characteristics—his nationalism and his moralism. He believed that good would triumph in the Parliament, and pushed for human rights legislation just as he wished for a unified Germany.
's The Brothers Grimm
, Heath Ledger
played a fictionalized version of Jakob.
German Confederation
The German Confederation was the loose association of Central European states created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries. It acted as a buffer between the powerful states of Austria and Prussia...
philologist, jurist
Jurist
A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
and mythologist
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
. He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law
Grimm's law
Grimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
, the author (with his brother
Wilhelm Grimm
Wilhelm Carl Grimm was a German author, the younger of the Brothers Grimm.-Life and work:...
) of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch
Deutsches Wörterbuch
Das Deutsche Wörterbuch / Deutsches Wörterbuch is one of the most important dictionaries of the German language...
, the author of Deutsche Mythologie
Deutsche Mythologie
Deutsche Mythologie is a seminal treatise on Germanic mythology by Jacob Grimm. First published in Germany in 1835, the work is an exhaustive treatment of the subject, tracing the mythology and beliefs of the Ancient Germanic peoples from their earliest attestations to their survivals in modern...
and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Children's and Household Tales is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales .-Composition:...
.
Life
Grimm was born in HanauHanau
Hanau is a town in the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany. It is located 25 km east of Frankfurt am Main. Its station is a major railway junction.- Geography :...
, in Hesse-Kassel
Hesse-Kassel
The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel or Hesse-Cassel was a state in the Holy Roman Empire under Imperial immediacy that came into existence when the Landgraviate of Hesse was divided in 1567 upon the death of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. His eldest son William IV inherited the northern half and the...
(or Hesse-Cassel). His father, who was a lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
, died while he was a child, and his mother was left with very small means; but her sister, who was lady of the chamber
Lady in Waiting
Lady in Waiting is the 2nd album by American southern rock band Outlaws, released in 1976. -Track listing:#"Breaker-Breaker" – 2:59#"South Carolina" – 3:05#"Ain't So Bad" – 3:48...
to the Landgravine of Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
, helped to support and educate her numerous family. Jacob, with his younger brother Wilhelm
Wilhelm Grimm
Wilhelm Carl Grimm was a German author, the younger of the Brothers Grimm.-Life and work:...
(born on 24 February 1786), was sent in 1798 to the public school at Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
.
In 1802 he proceeded to the University of Marburg, where he studied law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, a profession for which he had been destined by his father. His brother joined him at Marburg a year later, having just recovered from a long and severe illness, and likewise began the study of law.
Up to this time Jacob Grimm had been actuated only by a general thirst for knowledge and his energies had not found any aim beyond the practical one of making himself a position in life. The first definite impulse came from the lectures of Friedrich Karl von Savigny, the celebrated investigator of Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
, who, as Wilhelm Grimm himself says in the preface to the Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar), first taught him to realize what it meant to study any science. Savigny's lectures also awakened in him a love for historical
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and antiquarian
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
investigation, which forms the structure of all his work. The two men became personally acquainted, and it was in Savigny's well-stocked library that Grimm first turned over the leaves of Bodmer
Johann Jakob Bodmer
Johann Jakob Bodmer was a Swiss-German author, academic, critic and poet.-Life:Born at Greifensee, near Zürich, and first studying theology and then trying a commercial career, he finally found his vocation in letters...
's edition of the Old German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
minnesingers and other early texts, and felt an eager desire to penetrate further into the obscurities and half-revealed mysteries of their language.
In the beginning of 1805 he received an invitation from Savigny, who had moved to Paris, to help him in his literary work. Grimm passed a very happy time in Paris, strengthening his taste for the literatures of the Middle Ages
Medieval literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
by his studies in the Paris libraries. Towards the close of the year he returned to Kassel, where his mother and Wilhelm had settled, the latter having finished his studies. The next year he obtained a position in the war office with the very small salary of 100 thalers. One of his grievances was that he had to exchange his stylish Paris suit for a stiff uniform and pigtail. But he had full leisure for the prosecution of his studies.
In 1808, soon after the death of his mother, he was appointed superintendent of the private library of Jérôme Bonaparte
Jérôme Bonaparte
Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte, French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort was the youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia...
, King of Westphalia
Westphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
, into which Hesse-Kassel
Hesse-Kassel
The Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel or Hesse-Cassel was a state in the Holy Roman Empire under Imperial immediacy that came into existence when the Landgraviate of Hesse was divided in 1567 upon the death of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. His eldest son William IV inherited the northern half and the...
had been incorporated by Napoleon. Jerome appointed him an auditor to the state council, while he retained his other post. His salary was increased in a short interval from 2000 to 4000 francs, and his official duties were hardly more than nominal. After the expulsion of Jerome and the reinstalment of an elector, Grimm was appointed in 1813 secretary of legation, to accompany the Hessian minister to the headquarters of the allied army. In 1814 he was sent to Paris to demand restitution of the books carried off by the French, and in 1814–1815 he attended the Congress of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
as secretary of legation. On his return he was again sent to Paris on the same errand as before.
Meanwhile Wilhelm had received an appointment in the Kassel library
Universitätsbibliothek Kassel
The Universitätsbibliothek Kassel is a library located in the city of Kassel, Germany. Composed of the collections of the former Landesbibliothek and Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel as well as that of the Kassel University library, amongst the library's holdings is the...
, and in 1816 Jacob was made second librarian under Volkel. Upon the death of Volkel in 1828, the brothers expected to be advanced to the first and second librarianships respectively, and were dissatisfied when the first place was given to Rommel, the keeper of the archives. Consequently, they moved next year to Göttingen where Jacob received the appointment of professor and librarian, and Wilhelm that of under-librarian. Jacob Grimm lectured on legal antiquities, historical grammar
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
, literary history, and diplomatics
Diplomatics
Diplomatics , or Diplomatic , is the study that revolves around documentation. It is a study that focuses on the analysis of document creation, its inner constitutions and form, the means of transmitting information, and the relationship documented facts have with their creator...
, explained Old German poems, and commented on the Germania
Germania (book)
The Germania , written by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus around 98, is an ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire.-Contents:...
of Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
.
At this period he is described as small and lively in figure, with a harsh voice, speaking a broad Hessian dialect. His powerful memory enabled him to dispense with the manuscript on which most German professors relied, and he spoke extemporaneously, referring only occasionally to a few names and dates written on a slip of paper. He regretted that he had begun the work of teaching so late in life, but as a lecturer he was not successful: he had no aptitude for digesting facts and suiting them to the level of comprehension of his students. Even the brilliant, terse, and eloquent passages in his writings lost much of their effect when jerked out in the midst of a long array of dry facts.
In 1837, having been one of the seven professors
Göttingen Seven
The Göttingen Seven were a group of seven professors from Göttingen. In 1837 they protested against the abolition or alteration of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover by Ernest Augustus and refused to swear an oath to the new king of Hanover...
who signed a protest against the King of Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...
's abrogation of the constitution established some years before, he was dismissed from his professorship and banished from the kingdom of Hanover. He returned to Kassel with his brother who had also signed the protest. They remained there until 1840 when they accepted an invitation from the King of Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
to move to Berlin, where they both received professorships and were elected members of the Academy of Sciences. Not being under any obligation to lecture, Jacob seldom did so, but together with his brother worked at their great dictionary. During their time in Kassel, Jacob regularly attended the meetings of the academy where he read papers on the most varied subjects. The most well known are those on Lachmann, Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
, his brother Wilhelm, old age, and on the origin of language. He also described his impressions of Italian and Scandinavian travel, interspersing his more general observations with linguistic details, as is the case in all his works.
Grimm died in Berlin at the age of 78, working even at the end.
He was never seriously ill, and worked all day without haste and without pause. He was not at all impatient of interruption, but seemed rather to be refreshed by it, returning to his work without effort. He wrote for the press with great rapidity, and hardly ever made corrections. He never revised what he had written, remarking with a certain wonder on his brother, Wilhelm, who read his own manuscripts over again before sending them to press. His temperament was uniformly cheerful and he was easily amused. Outside his own special work he had a marked taste for botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
. The spirit that animated his work is best described by himself at the end of his autobiography:
"Nearly all my labors have been devoted, either directly or indirectly, to the investigation of our earlier language, poetry and laws. These studies may have appeared to many, and may still appear, useless; to me they have always seemed a noble and earnest task, definitely and inseparably connected with our common fatherland, and calculated to foster the love of it. My principle has always been in these investigations to under-value nothing, but to utilize the small for the illustration of the great, the popular tradition for the elucidation of the written monuments."
Linguistic work
The purely scientific side of Grimm's character developed slowly. He seems to have felt the want of definite principles of etymologyEtymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
without being able to discover them, and indeed even in the first edition of his grammar (1819) he seemed to be often groping in the dark. As early as 1815 we find August Wilhelm von Schlegel
August Wilhelm von Schlegel
August Wilhelm Schlegel was a German poet, translator, critic, and a foremost leader of German Romanticism. His translations of Shakespeare made the English dramatist's works into German classics.-Life and work:Schlegel was born at Hanover, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel, was a Lutheran...
reviewing the Altdeutsche Wälder (a periodical published by the two brothers) very severely, condemning the lawless etymological combinations it contained, and insisting on the necessity of strict philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
method and a fundamental investigation of the laws of language, especially in the correspondence of sounds. This criticism is said to have had a considerable influence on the direction of Grimm's studies.
Grimm's scientific character is notable for its combination of breadth and unity. He was as far removed from the narrowness of the specialist who has no ideas or sympathies beyond just one author or corner of science as he was from the shallow dabbler who feverishly attempts to master the details of a half-dozen unrelated pursuits. The same concentration exists within his own special studies. The very foundations of his nature were harmonious; his patriotism and love of historical investigation received their fullest satisfaction in the study of the language, traditions, mythology, laws and literature of his own countrymen and their kin. But from this centre, he pursued his investigations in every direction as far as his instinct allowed. He was equally fortunate in the harmony that existed between his intellectual and moral nature. He cheerfully made the heavy sacrifices that science demands from its disciples, without envy or bitterness; although he lived apart from his fellow men, he was full of human sympathies, and has had a profound influence on the destiny of mankind.
History of the German Language
Of all his more general works the boldest and most far-reaching was his Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (History of the German Language), in which the linguistic elements are emphasized. The subject of the work is the history hidden in the words of the German language (the oldest natural history of the Teutonic tribes determined by means of language). For this purpose he laboriously collected the scattered words and allusions found in classical writers, and endeavoured to determine the relationship between the German language and those of the GetaeGetae
The Getae was the name given by the Greeks to several Thracian tribes that occupied the regions south of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria, and north of the Lower Danube, in Romania...
, Thracia
Thracia
Thracia is a Web-Based computer game created and developed by an exclusively Romanian team, part of Infotrend Consulting, and launched in 2009. At the time, it was the first endeavor of its kind. All browser games were text based, made up mostly of static content...
ns, Scythia
Scythia
In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...
ns, and many other nations whose languages were at the time known only through doubtfully identified, often extremely corrupted remains preserved by Greek and Latin authors. Grimm's results have been greatly modified by the wider range of comparison and improved methods of investigation that now characterize linguistics, and many questions he raised will probably remain obscure, but his book's influence has been profound.
German Grammar
Grimm's famous Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar) was the outcome of his purely philological work. The labors of past generations from the humanists onwards resulted in an enormous collection of materials in the form of text-editions, dictionaries, and grammars, although most of it was uncritical and untrustworthy. Something had even been done in the way of the comparison and determination of general laws, and the concept of a comparative Germanic grammar had been clearly grasped by the illustrious Englishman George HickesGeorge Hickes
George Hickes was an English divine and scholar.-Biography:Hickes was born at Newsham, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1642...
by the beginning of the 18th century in his Thesaurus. Ten Kate
Jan Jakob Lodewijk ten Kate
Jan Jakob Lodewijk ten Kate , Dutch divine, prose writer and poet, was born at The Hague.He started in life as a lawyer's clerk...
in Holland had afterwards made valuable contributions to the history and comparison of the Germanic languages. Even Grimm himself did not at first intend to include all the languages in his Grammar, but he soon found that Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
postulated Gothic
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
, and that the later stages of German could not be understood without the help of other West Germanic
West Germanic languages
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of languages and include languages such as German, English, Dutch, Afrikaans, the Frisian languages, and Yiddish...
varieties including English, and that the rich literature of Scandinavia could not be ignored either. The first edition of the first part of the Grammar (which appeared in 1819), and is now extremely rare, treated of the inflections of all these languages, and included a general introduction, in which he vindicated the importance of an historical study of the German language against the a priori
A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)
The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments...
, quasi-philosophical methods then in vogue.
In 1822 this volume appeared in a second edition (really a new work, for, as Grimm himself says in the preface, it cost him little reflection to mow down the first crop to the ground). The wide distance between the two stages of Grimm's development in these two editions is significantly shown by the fact that while the first edition gives only the inflections, in the second volume phonology takes up no fewer than 600 pages, more than half of the whole volume. Grimm had, at last, awakened to the full conviction that all sound philology must be based on rigorous adhesion to the laws of sound change
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
, and he never afterwards swerved from this principle, which gave to all his investigations, even in their boldest flights, that iron-bound consistency, and that force of conviction that distinguishes science from dilettanteism. Prior to Grimm's time, philology was nothing but a more or less laborious and conscientious dilettanteism, with occasional flashes of scientific inspiration.
His advances must be attributed mainly to the influence of his contemporary Rasmus Christian Rask
Rasmus Christian Rask
Rasmus Rask was a Danish scholar and philologist.-Biography:...
. Rask was born two years later than Grimm, but his remarkable precocity gave him something of a head start. In Grimm's first editions, his Icelandic paradigms are based entirely on Rask's grammar, and in his second edition, he relied almost entirely on Rask for Old English. His debt to Rask can be appreciated only by comparing his treatment of Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
in the two editions; the difference is very great. For example, in the first edition he declines disg, dceges, plural dcegas, without having observed the law of vowel-change
Vowel shift
A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language.The best-known example in the English language is the Great Vowel Shift, which began in the 15th century...
pointed out by Rask. There can be little doubt that the appearance of Rask's Old English grammar was the primary impetus for Grimm to recast his work from the beginning. To Rask also belongs the merit of having first distinctly formulated the laws of sound-correspondence in the different languages, especially in the vowels (those more fleeting elements of speech previously ignored by etymologists).
The Grammar was continued in three volumes, treating principally derivation, composition and syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, the last of which was unfinished. Grimm then began a third edition, of which only one part, comprising the vowels, appeared in 1840, his time being afterwards taken up mainly by the dictionary. The Grammar stands alone in the annals of science for its comprehensiveness, method and fullness of detail. Every law, every letter, every syllable of inflection in the different languages was illustrated by an almost exhaustive mass of material, and it has served as a model for all succeeding investigators. Diez
Friedrich Christian Diez
Friedrich Christian Diez , German philologist, was born at Gießen, in Hessen-Darmstadt.He was educated first at the gymnasium and then at the university of his native town and Göttingen...
's grammar of the Romance languages is founded entirely on its methods, which have also exerted a profound influence on the wider study of the Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
in general.
Grimm's Law
Grimm's Law, also known as 'Rask's-Grimm's Rule' is the first law in linguistics concerning a non-trivial sound changeSound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
. It was a turning point in the development of linguistics, allowing the introduction of a rigorous methodology to historic linguistic research. It concerns the correspondence of consonants in the older Indo-European, and Low Saxon
Low German
Low German or Low Saxon is an Ingvaeonic West Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands...
and High German languages
High German languages
The High German languages or the High German dialects are any of the varieties of standard German, Luxembourgish and Yiddish, as well as the local German dialects spoken in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg and in neighboring portions of Belgium and the...
, and was first fully stated by Grimm in the second edition of the first part of his grammar. The correspondence of single consonants had been more or less clearly recognized by several of his predecessors including Friedrich von Schlegel, Rasmus Christian Rask and Johan Ihre
Johan Ihre
Johan Ihre was a Swedish philologist and historical linguist.Ihre was born in Lund, son of the theologian Thomas Ihre and his spouse Brita Steuchia...
, the last having established a considerable number of literarum permutationes, such as b for f, with the examples bœra = ferre, befwer = fiber. Rask, in his essay on the origin of the Icelandic language
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, gave the same comparisons, with a few additions and corrections, and even the very same examples in most cases. As Grimm in the preface to his first edition expressly mentioned this essay of Rask, there is every probability that it inspired his own investigations. But there is a wide difference between the isolated permutations of his predecessors and his own comprehensive generalizations. The extension of the law to High German is entirely his own work, however.
The only fact that can be adduced in support of the assertion that Grimm wished to deprive Rask of his claims to priority is that he does not expressly mention Rask's results in his second edition. But this is part of the plan of his work, to refrain from all controversy or reference to the works of others. In his first edition he expressly calls attention to Rask's essay, and praises it most ungrudgingly. It is true that a certain bitterness of feeling afterwards sprang up between Grimm and Rask, but this may have well been the fault of the latter, who, impatient of contradiction and irritable in controversy, refused to play with the value of Grimm's views when they involved modification of his own.
German Dictionary
Grimm's monumental German dictionaryGerman dictionary
German dictionaries have a history dating back to the Brothers Grimm, who started work on the first major dictionary of the German language, the Deutsches Wörterbuch in 1838. The Duden dictionary dates back to 1880, and is currently the prescriptive source for the spelling of German....
, the Deutsches Wörterbuch
Deutsches Wörterbuch
Das Deutsche Wörterbuch / Deutsches Wörterbuch is one of the most important dictionaries of the German language...
, remains a standard work of reference to the present day.
The dictionary was undertaken on so large a scale as to make it impossible for him and his brother to complete it themselves. The dictionary, as far as it was worked on by Grimm himself, has been described as a collection of disconnected antiquarian essays of high value.
Literary work
The first work Jacob Grimm published, Über den altdeutschen Meistergesang (1811), was of a purely literary character. Yet even in this essay Grimm showed that MinnesangMinnesang
Minnesang was the tradition of lyric and song writing in Germany which flourished in the 12th century and continued into the 14th century. People who wrote and performed Minnesang are known as Minnesingers . The name derives from the word minne, Middle High German for love which was their main...
and Meistersang were really one form of poetry, of which they merely represented different stages of development, and also announced his important discovery of the invariable division of the Lied into three strophic parts.
Grimm's text-editions were mostly prepared in conjunction with his brother. In 1812 they published the two ancient fragments of the Hildebrandslied and the Weissenbrunner Gehet, Jacob having discovered what till then had never been suspected—namely the alliteration
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
in these poems. However, Jacob had little taste for text editing, and, as he himself confessed, working on a critical text gave him little pleasure. He therefore left this department to others, especially Lachmann, who soon turned his brilliant critical genius, trained in the severe school of classical philology, to Old and Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
poetry and metre.
Both Brothers were attracted from the beginning by all national poetry, whether in the form of epics, ballads or popular tales. They published In 1816–1818 a collection of legends culled from diverse sources and published the two-volume Deutsche Sagen (German Legends). At the same time they collected all the folktales they could find, partly from the mouths of the people, partly from manuscripts and books, and published in 1812–1815 the first edition of those Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), which has carried the name of the brothers Grimm into every household of the western world. The closely related subject of the satirical beast epic of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
also held great charm for Jacob Grimm, and he published an edition of the Rejnhart Fuchs in 1834. His first contribution to mythology was the first volume of an edition of the Edda
Edda
The term Edda applies to the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, both of which were written down in Iceland during the 13th century in Icelandic, although they contain material from earlier traditional sources, reaching into the Viking Age...
ic songs, undertaken jointly with his brother, and published in 1815. However, this work was not followed by any others on the subject.
The first edition of his Deutsche Mythologie (German Mythology) appeared in 1835. This great work covered the whole range of the subject, tracing the mythology and superstitions of the old Teutons
Teutons
The Teutons or Teutones were mentioned as a Germanic tribe by Greek and Roman authors, notably Strabo and Marcus Velleius Paterculus and normally in close connection with the Cimbri, whose ethnicity is contested between Gauls and Germani...
back to the very dawn of direct evidence, and following their evolution to modern-day popular traditions, tales and expressions.
Jacob Grimm and politics
Jacob Grimm's work tied in strongly to his views on Germany and its culture. His work with fairy tales and his philological work dealt with German origins. He loved his people and wished for a united Germany, he and his brother were vocal proponents of expansionist Pan-GermanismPan-Germanism
Pan-Germanism is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as Großdeutschland , where "German-speaking" was taken to include the Low German, Frisian and Dutch-speaking populations of the Low...
. In the German revolution of 1848, he was given a chance to make these views known when he was elected to the Frankfurt National Parliament
Frankfurt Parliament
The Frankfurt Assembly was the first freely elected parliament for all of Germany. Session was held from May 18, 1848 to May 31, 1849 in the Paulskirche at Frankfurt am Main...
. The people of Germany had demanded a constitution, so the Parliament, formed of elected members from various German states, met to form one. Grimm was selected for the office in a large part because of his part in the University of Goettingen's refusal to swear to the king of Hanover expounded upon above. He then went to Frankfurt, where he did not play a big part, but did make some speeches, which tended to stray into the realms of history and philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
rather than whatever political question was at hand. Grimm was adamant on one subject, however; he wanted the Danish duchy of Holstein
Holstein
Holstein is the region between the rivers Elbe and Eider. It is part of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state of Germany....
to be under German control. He talked passionately on this subject, which showed his fierce German nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
Grimm was not made to be a politician, and also soon realized that the National Assembly was not getting anywhere (it was eventually dissolved without establishing a constitution), and so asked to be released from his duties and returned with relief to his former studies. His political career did not bloom into anything great, but it does illustrate his characteristics—his nationalism and his moralism. He believed that good would triumph in the Parliament, and pushed for human rights legislation just as he wished for a unified Germany.
Works
The following is a complete list of his separately published works. Those he published with his brother are marked with a star (*). For a list of his essays in periodicals, etc., see vol. V of his Kleinere Schriften, from which the present list is taken. His life is best studied in his own Selbstbiographie, in vol. I of the Kleinere Schriften. There is also a brief memoir by K Gdeke in Göttinger Professoren (Gotha (Perthes), 1872).- Über den altdeutschen Meistergesang (Göttingen, 1811)
* Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Berlin, 1812–1815) (many editions)* Das Lied von Hildebrand und des Weissenbrunner Gebet (Kassel, 1812)- Altdeutsche Wälder (Kassel, Frankfurt, 1813–1816, 3 vols.)
* Der arme Heinrich von Hartmann von der Aue (Berlin, 1815)- Irmenstrasse und Irmensäule (Vienna, 1815)
* Die Lieder der alten Edda (Berlin, 1815)- Silva de romances viejos (Vienna, 1815)
* Deutsche Sagen (Berlin, 1816–1818, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1865–1866)- Deutsche Grammatik (Göttingen, 1819, 2nd ed., Göttingen, 1822–1840) (reprinted 1870 by Wilhelm SchererWilhelm SchererWilhelm Scherer , German philologist and historian of literature.-Life:...
, Berlin) - Wuk Stephanowitsch' Kleine Serbische Grammatik, verdeutscht mit einer Vorrede (Leipzig and Berlin, 1824) Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic - Serbian Grammer
- Zur Recension der deutschen Grammatik (Kassel, 1826)
* Irische Elfenmärchen, aus dem Englischen (Leipzig, 1826)- Deutsche Rechtsaltertumer (Göttingen, 1828, 2nd ed., 1854)
- Hymnorum veteris ecclesiae XXVI. interpretatio theodisca (Göttingen, 1830)
- Reinhart Fuchs (Berlin, 1834)
- Deutsche Mythologie (Göttingen, 1835, 3rd ed., 1854, 2 vols.)
- Taciti Germania edidit (Göttingen, 1835)
- Über meine Entlassung (Basel, 1838)
- (together with SchmellerSchmellerSchmeller is surname of:* Johann Andreas Schmeller , Germanist , German painter , German-Austrian art historian, publicist...
) Lateinische Gedichte des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1838) - Sendschreiben an Karl Lachmann über Reinhart Fuchs (Berlin, 1840)
- Weistümer, Th. i. (Göttingen, 1840) (continued, partly by others, in 5 parts, 1840–1869)
- Andreas und Elene (Kassel, 1840)
- Frau Aventure (Berlin, 1842)
- Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Leipzig, 1848, 3rd ed., 1868, 2 vols.)
- Des Wort des Besitzes (Berlin, 1850)
* Deutsches Wörterbuch, Bd. i. (Leipzig, 1854)- Rede auf Wilhelm Grimm und Rede über das Alter (Berlin, 1868, 3rd ad., 1865)
- Kleinere Schriften (F. Dümmler, Berlin, 1864–1884, 7 vols.).
- vol. 1 : Reden und Abhandlungen (1864, 2nd ed. 1879)
- vol. 2 : Abhandlungen zur Mythologie und Sittenkunde (1865)
- vol. 3 : Abhandlungen zur Litteratur und Grammatik (1866)
- vol. 4 : Recensionen und vermischte Aufsätze part I (1869)
- vol. 5 : Recensionen und vermischte Aufsätze part II (1871)
- vol. 6 : Recensionen und vermischte Aufsätze part III
- vol. 7 : Recensionen und vermischte Aufsätze part IV (1884)
Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm
In Terry GilliamTerry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
's The Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm (film)
The Brothers Grimm is a 2005 fantasy Adventure film directed by Terry Gilliam. The film stars Matt Damon and Heath Ledger in an exaggerated and fictitious portrait of the Brothers Grimm as traveling con-artists in French-occupied Germany during the late 18th century...
, Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger
Heath Andrew Ledger was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger moved to the United States in 1998 to develop his film career...
played a fictionalized version of Jakob.
External links
- Grimm`s Fairy Tales.
- Teutonic Mythology, English translation of Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie (1880).
- Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm, translated by Margaret Hunt (This site is the only one to feature all of the Grimms' notes translated in English along with the tales from Hunt's original edition. Andrew Lang's introduction is also included.)
- Official website