The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World

by Jack D. Zipes

Most of the fairy tales that we grew up with we know thanks to the Brothers Grimm. Jack Zipes, one of the more astute critics of fairy tales, explores the romantic myth of the brothers as wandering scholars, who gathered "authentic" tales from the peasantry. Bringing to bear his own critical expertise as well and new biographical information, Zipes examines the interaction between the Grimms' lives and their work. He reveals the Grimms' personal struggle to overcome social prejudice and poverty, as well as their political efforts--as scholars and civil servants--toward unifying the German states. By deftly interweaving the social, political, and personal elements of the lives of the Brothers Grimm, Zipes rescues them from sentimental obscurity. No longer figures in a fairy tale, the Brothers Grimm emerge as powerful creators, real men who established the fairy tale as one of our great literary institutions. Part biography, part critical assessment, and part social history, The Brothers Grimm provides a complex and very real story about fairy tales and the modern world.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Fairy Tales, Folklore, Biography, Literary Criticism, Research

331 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Jack David Zipes is a retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota. He has published and lectured extensively on the subject of fairy tales, their linguistic roots, and argued that they have a "socialization function". According to Zipes, fairy tales "serve a meaningful social function, not just for compensation but for revelation: the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society." His arguments are avowedly based on the neo-Marxist critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

Zipes enjoys using droll titles for his works like Don't Bet on the Prince and The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Ridinghood.

He completed a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University. Zipes taught at various institutions before heading German language studies at the University of Minnesota. He has retranslation of the complete fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.

Reviews

[Hayden · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm currently beginning the research for my senior thesis, which centers on fairy tales in Europe during the nineteenth century. Obviously, the Grimm brothers are a sizable presence in my topic, so I chose this book to get a biographical background on the brothers. (Finding good biographies of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm is not an easy task!) What I didn't realize is that only about 1/5 of this book is actually biography; the rest is a collection of essays by the author. Unfortunately, I vehemently disagreed with upwards of 90% of Zipes's opinions, which made for a very unpleasant reading experience. I almost didn't write a review for this book, as I know readers can get quite heated about their beloved fairy tales, and I didn't want to pick a fight in the comment section, but...

I do rather want to at least touch on a few things that I really found maddening. This is going to be rather longish, and more irritated a review than I've done in a while, so I apologize.

First of all, I completely admit bias when it comes to Disney. I grew up on Disney, and in many cases, those movies were my first exposure to fairy tales and ultimately what opened the door to a lifelong love of them. Personally, I find them completely valid interpretations and retellings of fairy tales, tailored for a specific audience not unlike the manner in which Zipes elsewhere defends the Grimm brothers for doing. Also, I have a personal pet peeve because it think a lot of scholars rip into Disney simply for being too lowbrow, popular, or accessible; scholars can really be academic elitists sometimes. You don't have to like Disney, but you don't have to be snobbish about it, either.

That being said, if you are going to completely diss and drag Disney through the mud as Zipes does, you should probably at least make sure you have your facts straight. Zipes not only over-generalizes Disney films, but in some cases completely misrepresents them to make his points (and in his eagerness to criticize them, often contradicts himself in the process) He mixes up the incidental happenings of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty; in his list of harmful "subliminal messages" that Disney's Sleeping Beauty teaches children, he declares that the film implies that womanly curiosity is dangerous. I can only assume this is because Aurora touches the spindle, as many versions of the story have the princess do so out of curiosity. Anyone who has watched the Disney movie will know, however, that Aurora is obviously put into a trance by Maleficent and manipulated into touching it, while Zipes's other specifics (women are helpless without men, men can restore anything to life, etc) are certainly not something Disney invented, nor even particularly apply to Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty (I would argue that they, in fact, do not- for instance, Zipes neglects to mention that the prince is only able to rescue the princess after he receives female help in the form of the fairies). Zipes does this sort of thing several times, twisting Disney movies so that they support his point of view.

This leads into my next problem: Zipes's tendency to blame "the patriarchy" for everything. While I won't deny that there are certain harmful patriarchal-based themes in many fairy tales, Zipes tears down nearly every instance of male authority or heroism. But a woman being saved by a man is not problematic in and of itself. I don't think that it should be the only fairy tale plot that children consume, of course, but women being told that to be "strong" they always have to save themselves and that they have to be their own hero can also be as harmful. We can't do everything alone, and I've seen a lot of issues come from this mindset (in both men and women). Sometimes we can't save ourselves, and knowing that we are important and treasured enough by someone else for them to risk their lives to rescue us can be just as empowering as knowing we have the skills and intelligence to help others. Of course, the modern feminist hatred of male rescuers is one of my pet peeves, so I get rather heated about it, but it also just grows tiring when Zipes just...won't stop talking about it. The repetitive bashing of the patriarchy just got tired and old after the first several times; we get the point. It was like he was overcompensating because he was a man himself and wanted to make sure everyone knew he was a feminist.

Finally, I gave up on ever liking Zipes when he began ripping into specific children's picture and story books, several of which I've read and enjoyed. Apparently, Zipes has something against storybooks that portray fairy tale characters in stereotypical medieval or "fairytale" clothing, even if the art is beautiful; in his words, they "reveal nothing new" about the stories. Then, after complaining about these traditional retellings, he praises this...hackneyed, poorly written modern retelling of Snow White that was retold entirely in cringe-worthy slang. It honestly sounded like something I might have written to be funny when I was like, thirteen. That's a common theme in my experience with this particular essay: he criticizes stories I enjoy, and praises one I think are honestly pretty awful. I could write an entire essay myself on how I disagree with him on this topic, but I'm running out of steam and I think you get the main idea.

The only reason this book gets two stars out of me is for the biographical info on the Grimms, much of which I was having trouble finding elsewhere. If I'd just stuck with that, I'd probably would have a much more positive impression of Mr. Zipes than I do now.

(The worst is that, judging by his Goodreads profile picture, Mr. Zipes looks like a rather friendly sort. Unfortunately, now if I should ever perchance meet the man, I'll have to challenge him to a duel.)

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Particularly interesting on the historical and biographical background (at the beginning) and on the place of the tales in post-war Germany (at the end) - the differences between East and West, and post-unification. Also looks at various interpretations over the years, including the modern trend of rewriting fairy tales to make a point about something else or to reinterpret the stories, Disney, and the illustration of the tales. (He doesn't mention the rather more raucous British pantomime tradition, which is another interesting take on some of the best known tales). Interesting and useful academic book, accessible to the general reader.

[Elly · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Needed more shade thrown at Disney.

[Charles Grimm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across a few of Zipes' articles in the fall 12 semester when looking at fairy tale as utopian literature, and the more I read him the more I wanted to keep reading his work. My wife got this book for me for Christmas, and it was very interesting. Zipes looks at the biographical information we have available on the brothers Grimm to provide insight into their personal reasons for compiling and editing stories as part of a nation-building enterprise and then he goes into various interpretations of the fairy tales, looking at how they have been received historically in Western culture in general and in West and East Germany up until the unification. Since I plan on studying more about the Grimm Brothers later, this is a valuable tool for basic information and an introduction to many of the critical methods already applied to the tales.

[Melvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I keep bumping into the Grimm Brothers in my Czech-English** literary translation work, in which Central European fairy tales sometimes pop up quite unexpectedly. For example in Irena Dousková's Hrdý Budžes, a routine family trip through the Bohemian forests echoes with allusions to Little Red Riding Hood in the Grimm Brothers' version, as opposed to the French-influenced version that Anglophone readers will be more familiar with. Intrigued, I investigated further...

Evidently the go-to expert on fairy tales these days is Jack Zipes, so I read this book of his and appreciated the range of angles that he looked at the Grimms' work from, not only biographical, but also psychoanalytical, historical, sociological, linguistic and ethical, while also focusing on utopian, feminist, Romantic nation-building, literary critical and other aspects, with viewpoints from the Jungian, Marxian, Campbellian and Waldorfian to the Disneyan and the East German cinematic.

Some of the most enticing rabbit holes from my special-interest standpoint involved the Germanness of the Grimm Brothers' tales, which evidently to this day are second only to the Bible in German bestseller lists:

"No sooner did World War II come to a close than explanations were urgently sought to explain why the Germans had committed such atrocious acts as those discovered in the concentration camps. Given the importance that fairy tales played in the German socialization process, particularly the Grimms' tales, it was not by chance that the occupation forces, led by the British, briefly banned the publication of fairy tales in 1945. According to the military authorities, the brutality in the fairy tales was partially responsible for generating attitudes that led to the acceptance of the Nazis and their monstrous crimes. Moreover, the tales allegedly gave children a false impression of the world that made them susceptible to lies and irrationalism."

"In Germany, the obsession with the Grimms is actually an obsession with the fairy tale as a vital and dynamic literary institution, a national institution, that offers writers and nonliterate storytellers a means to participate in a dialogue and discourse about specific social conditions. Germans depend on this institution more than people in other Western countries because its development occurred exactly at a time when the nation was forming itself and when the bourgeoisie was achieving self-consciousness."

"Darnton compares various French folk tales with German ones, largely taken from the Grimms' collection, and concludes that "Where the French tales tend to be realistic, earthy, bawdy, and comical, the German veer off toward the supernatural, the poetic, the exotic, and the violent.)"

But then later: "There is no doubt that important discoveries about national character and nationalism can be made through ethnological and historical studies of folk tales, but not when Germans are stereotypically linked with violence and cruelty."

"What is special about Germany is that the fairy tale as an institution became a sacred meeting place of readers from the agrarian, middle-class, and aristocratic sectors of the population, a place to which they could withdraw, a source from which they could draw succor, and through which their aspirations and wishes could be fulfilled. WIthin the institution of the fairy tale they could become legitimate human beings again; it was within this institution that all social classes in what was to become Germany could unite."

"Undoubtedly the fairy tale as institution has its own special tradition in other countries, but outside Germany it has not become such a "sacred" convention and used as such a metaphorical medium to attain truth."

But then note: "Many of the tales that the Grimms recorded were of French origin because the Hassenpflugs were of Huguenot ancestry and spoke French at home."

Even taking into account the rather hyperbolic nature of these assertions, it does raise the issue for me whether such Central European fairy tales traditionally play a comparatively central role in Czech culture too. My impression from this book is that the cultural similarities between some Czechs and some Germans are clearly more than skin deep. For example, take the forest motif, bearing in mind that Bohemia is one of the most densely wooded areas of Europe, with forests that repelled invading Romans and Tartars:

Urwald: Special significance of the forest

"WIlhelm H. Riehl, who was a contemporary of the Grimms, wrote a book entitled Land und Leute, in which he discussed the significance of the forest for the German people: 'In the opinion of the German people the forest is the only great possession that has yet to be completely given away. [...] there is a type of communist heritage that is rooted in history. Where is there anything else that has been preserved like this other than the forest? This is the root of genuine German social conditions.'"

"The saying of Wald, Weide und Wasser (forest, pasture, and water) has not yet been entirely forgotten by the German people. [...] He draws our attention here to the manner in which the Grimms accepted and portrayed the forest in their tales and also the manner in which various social types related to the forest."

"As Urwald (primeval forest), the forest is the seat of tradition and justice; the heroes of the Grimms' tales customarily march or drift into the forest and they are rarely the same people when they leave it. The forest provides them with all they will need, if they know how to interpret the signs."

"The forest as unconventional, free, alluring, but dangerous. The forest loomed large metaphorically in the minds of the Brothers Grimm. In 1813 they published a journal entided Altdeutsche Wälder (Old German Forests), intentionally recalling the title of Johann Gottfried Herder's Kritische Wälder (Critical Forests, 1769) - Herder being the man who was responsible for awakening the interest in German folklore of the romantics. This journal was to contain traces, indications, signs and hints with regard to the origins of German customs, laws, and language."


Ethical and moral aspects

"Certainly it was in part due to [the Brothers'] religious beliefs and upbringing that they stressed diligence, industry, honesty, order, and cleanliness as the ingredients necessary for success. Indeed, the Grimms were success-oriented; their value system, based on the Protestant ethic, favored a utilitarian function within the formation of the German bourgeois public sphere"

And yet:

"Thieves in the Grimms' tales [...] are generally admired, for thievery is an art form. It involves creating an illusion, just as the Grimms, in the composition of their tales, were seeking to create an illusion which could transform itself into an anticipatory illumination, pointing to the way the underprivileged and disadvantaged might overcome obstacles and attain happiness."

"Practically all the protagonists in the Grimms' tales must leam something about the art of thievery,"

"It is knowing how to use words that gives the hero power over others and objects."

"If a Grimm protagonist (even an animal or object) does not communicate with helpers, whether they be beasts, fairies, devils, giants, or hags, he or she is lost. The tales describe the need for communicative action that enables the protagonist to seize the possibility to right a wrong and move up in society, to overcome feudal restrictions, to conceive a more just realm."

"The wisest thing, so the fairy tale taught mankind in olden times, and teaches children to this day, is to meet the forces of the mythical world with cunning and high spirits."

"While educated Christians trembled in fear of witches and devils, the soldier of the fairy tale deceived witches and devils from beginning to end - it is only the fairy tale which highlights the "dumb devil."

This perception of the "dumb devil" is also highlighted in Czech folklore. As Kamila Skopová writes in Böhmische Weihnachten, the German translation of her Vánoční svátky: Im Unterschied zum österreichischen Krampus oder dem deutschen Teufel ist der tschechische Teufel (čert) gutmütig, ein wenig naiv und dumm, er verletzt niemanden und auch die Kinder fürchten ihn nicht sehr.

"There is something eminently rational and methodological about the structure, and the emphasis on the capability of an individual to achieve success despite overwhelming odds corresponds to a basic bourgeois notion of progressive Enlightenment thinking."

"We tend to forget the tales in which women are strong, intelligent, and brave, and outwit men. Such tales as "Clever Gretel," "The Clever Farmer's Daughter," or "The True Bride" have not become part of the fairy-tale canon."

The role of magic

"The critique of unjust social and political conditions in most of the Grimms' fairy tales was realized metaphorically by magical means that reconciled the readers of their tales to their helplessness and impotence in society. Paradoxically, the result was a rationalization of unjust conditions through magic, which also provided hope that alternative ways of living were possible."

"[the brothers'] democratic sentiments [...] were embedded in their folklore projects from the beginning. This is why the forest as a topos is so important in their tales; it also was evidently important in the minds of the oral narrators, especially when they depicted the soldier or tailor in need of overcoming prejudices or searching for some magical help to bring about a new sense of social justice."

Elsewhere Zipes adopts a rather stark Marxist standpoint: "The magic and miraculous serve to rupture the feudal confines and represent metaphorically the conscious and unconscious desires of the lower classes to seize power."

I would add a socio-psychological element to this metaphorical dimension :-) and suggest that magic of all hues in fairy tales represents the "cunning and high spirits" mentioned elsewhere in this review, i.e. the heightened alacrity and deroutinized cognitive state e.g. required of a conjuror to seemingly bypass the laws of physics and strictures of reason (sometimes in order to gain power over the audience :-)). Folk wisdom is sometimes telling us to wise up.


Broader psychoanalytical and philosophical interpretations

"For Adorno and Horkheimer, Odysseus is the prototype of the bourgeois individual, and they analyze his struggles philosophically as representing both the general and particular form that the struggle against nature takes. Odysseus battles his way horne while demonstrating what qualities one needs in order to retain control over inner and outer nature."

"Underlying the work of the Waldorf Schools and similar pedagogical approaches was the belief that the fairy tales reflect inner experiences related to natural conditions of primeval times, and that the symbols and images of the fairy tales enable a child to imbibe and grasp the secret laws of nature."

"Josephine Belz's Das Märchen und die Phantasie des Kindes (The Fairy Tale and the Imagination ofthe Child, 1918),25 in which she tried to establish relevant connections between children's ways of fantasizing and the symbols in the tales. Later, Geza Roheim and Carl Jung wrote valuable studies of fairy tales that sought to go beyond Freud's theories. In the period following World War II, Aniela Jaffe, Joseph Campbell, Marie von Franz, and Verena Kast charted the links between archetypes, the collective unconscious, and fairy tales, while Erich Fromm, Julius Heuscher, and Bruno Bettelheim focused on Oedipal conflicts from neo-Freudian positions in their analyses of some Grimms' tales. Finally, Andre Favat published an important study, Child and Tale (1977), which uses Piaget's notions of child development, interests, and stages of understanding to explore the tales and their impact."

Jung referred to the harmonization of the anima and animus in fairy tales.

"Fairy tales, folk songs, nursery rhymes, comic strips, or so-called popular or minor works of art, but they contain what Ernst Bloch, the German philosopher of hope, has designated a utopian surplus or an anticipatory illumination of a better life. That is, there is always something "left over" in them, something indelible that provides glimpses into our universal struggles and suggests alternatives to our present personal and social situation."

"The tales are repositories of peasants' social and political living conditions. In particular, Darnton has reconstructed the way French peasants saw the world under the Old Regime by asking what experiences they shared in everyday life and then interpreting the tales as direct expressions of their experiences."

Some interesting historical and biographical points

"[The brothers] devoted themselves to their research and immense correspondence with scholars throughout the world (see*** below)"

"[The tales] were not at all intended for children. The volume was simply part of their grand project to excavate the natural poetry of the German people."

"Bettina von Arnim, a close friend and talented writer, to whom the Grimms dedicated the first edition of Childrens and Household Tales, was trying to convince the new King ofPrussia, Friedrich WIlhelm IV, to bring the brothers to Berlin."

"Most of the storytellers during this period were educated young women from the middle dass or aristocracy. For instance, in Kassel a group of young women from the WIld family (Dortchen, Gretchen, Lisette, and Marie Elisabeth), and their mother (Dorothea), and from the Hassenpflug family (Amalie, Jeanette, and Marie) used to meet regularly to relate tales they had heard from their nursemaids, governesses, and servants, or tales they may have read."

"The majority of the [Brothers'] storytellers came from Hessia: Dorothea Viehmann, a tailor's wife from nearby Zwehrn who used to sell fruit in Kassel, would visit the Grimms and told them a good many significant tales; and Johann Friedrich (Wachtmeister or sentinel) Krause, an old retired soldier, gave the brothers tales in exchange for some of their old clothes."

"The model for a good many of their tales was the work of the gifted romantic artist Philipp Otto Runge, whose two stories in dialect, "The Fisherman and His WIfe" and "The Juniper Tree," represented in tone, structure, and content the ideal narrative that the Grimms wanted to create."

"The so-called real folk transmission of tales that distinguished themselves not least because of their abstruse, fragmentary, obscene or also rebellious qualities did not appeal to them and do not appear in their collection."

"One of the best kept secrets of the Cold War was East Germany's production of marvelous fairy-tale films for children. Fortunately, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are very few secrets left, and we now have access to these cinematic treasures created by DEFA."

On national approaches, Zipes concludes in a footnote that "the national receptions of the Grimms throughout the world and "national" approaches to folklore and fairy tales are often very distinct and need to be studied more carefully."

* One online thesis concluded that "a statistically significant number of Czech fairy tales are decidedly anti-elitist, while no such pattern can be observed in representative collections of traditional British fairy tales." https://dspace.cuni.cz/bitstream/hand...

**It turns out the Brothers Grimm had a direct influence on the emerging Czech interest in Volkspoesie and the ancient epic in the early 19th century. In The Czech Manuscripts, David L. Cooper mentions that the brothers corresponded with Czech scholars such as Dobrovský, who were interested in the discovery and publication of older Czech literary works and had a particular interest in finding genuinely old folk songs. "The Grimms and other German researchers were actively collecting examples of European epic poetry as foundational works for how they were reconceiving the histories of European national literatures, and in 1811 Jacob Grimm inquired if the Slavs might not have some material to compare to the Icelandic Edda songs."

[Rebecca Fung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore fairytales so this book was very easy for me to like. There was a lot of historical background for fairytale and folklore geeks and some great discussion of how folklore is kept alive and authentic even while it is edited. There maybe some disagreement, though, about how authentic some of those voices and tales really are after they are mashed up, slightly changed to fit a formula and so on. I liked that a few comparison texts are given so you can see the evolution of some of the edits.

This is a series of essays and some of the themes will be more interesting than others. I found the historical background good context about the world the fairytales came from and the values of the people there and I liked the discussion of the values in heroes that led to fairytale tropes with comparisons to Odysseus, and the legacy in East and West Germany. It was interesting to read about how the Grimms collected their tales and it busts some of the myths about the stories. I also found reading this book opened me up to Grimm tales I hadn't heard of.

I found the essay on psychology and the Freudian aspects in fairytales the most unconvincing essay.

However I want to read more fairytales, write more fairytale-based stories as a result of this book and I will be approaching my reading and writing with a fresh perspective as a result of this book - it was very interesting and provocative.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good study of the historical context and reception of Grimm's fairy tales, especially for readers already familiar with the tales and the brothers' philological scholarship. The chapter on the tales in post-WWII Germany, both FRG and GDR, is very interesting and adds a nice insight into how we adopt fairy tales to various political worldviews. We need more studies like this one, and with the dearth of serious Grimm scholarship (as opposed to close reading/criticism of individual tales) in the U.S. this book helps better understand the Brothers Grimm, what they did, how, and why, as opposed to reading into the tales whatever a given critical lens may suggest.

[Rachel Robins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've done a lot of reading on the Grimms' lately as I am working on a conference paper about their portrayal of men in fairy tales. This is geared to a more academic audience but I found it very interesting, with realitive easy reading, about the Brothers Grimms and how and why they recorded fairy tales that are beloved, or highly critized, worldwide. Some of Zipes' stuff is painful, difficult reading but this was not bad and even enjoyable :-)

[Colette · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. I read the introductory material, the first chapter, and parts of the other chapters. I was looking for more of a biographical treatment of the Grimm brothers. The first chapter is biographical, but it is very dry and distant. Zipes did quote some autobiographies they wrote. I’d like to get those and read them.

This seems to be a book of revised talks given at conferences and the like. The view of the Grimms is more psychological and post-modern/critical theory than I care to read at this time.

[Ralph Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was way too smart for me. Lulz. In all seriousness, this is an incredible and insightful academic work that hints at what real intellectual analysis, especially that used by higher education forums, could be if it didn't focus on pushing buttons and tickling anti-establishment bellies. Zipes has a comprehensive view of the Grimms with a consideration of their positive and negative influence on culture.

[Erika Jost · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so good and makes me want to read more Jack Zipes on fairy tales. Context on tailors and thieves, discussion on “Maiden without Hands,” and some history on the development of the Cinderella story were particular standouts. Class-centered perspective on story-telling is timely as ever.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book examines the lives of the Grimm brothers, and how they came to collect their famous volumes of tales. The background does a lot to explain the context of the collection of these tales, how and why they were altered by the brothers, and the way these tales have been altered and interpreted ever since. It is interesting, and imperative, to understand how these tales, which have become myth, were truly created in the sense we know them in the 19th century by bourgeois champions of a united Germany.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was fun to get historical background on the Grimm brothers and their stories. Only recommend if you want historical info on the brothers and on their literature. Definitely non-fiction and not that fast of a read. I liked it because I've been interested in hidden meanings in fairy tales and rhymes.

[April]

I love The Brothers Grimm so this should be interesting!

[hoffnarr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative for someone like me who knows little about them. Unfortunately, they are collected essays that grow somewhat repetitive.

[Kris Babe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the lives and the reach of the brothers who gathered and formed folk tales in their own images.

[Kate Forsyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of academic essays on the Grimm Brothers by one of the world’s best known fairytale scholars.