Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were philologists in Kassel and Göttingen, founders of Germanic linguistics, Jacob’s law of consonant shifts and the great German dictionary among their work, who between 1812 and 1857 collected and revised the Children’s and Household Tales, two hundred stories taken down from storytellers, many of them educated women of their acquaintance rather than peasants. Snow White, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin: Wilhelm polished them through seven editions into the form the world knows. They were dismissed from Göttingen for protesting the king’s revocation of the constitution, and the tales are the most translated German book.