Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm Biography

Dromo's Den

GRIMM, JAKOB LUDWIG KARL (1785-1583). An eminent German philologist and antiquary, born Jan. 4, 1785, at Hanau in Hesse-Cassel. He was educated in philology and law at Marburg (1802), and afterward (1805) visited Paris, where he pursued a variety of studies under the direction of Savigny and cultivated his taste for mediaeval literature. On his return to Germany at the close of the year, he was employed in the office of the Minister of War at Cassel and became successively librarian to the King of Westphalia (Jerome Bonaparte), and auditor to his Council of State (1805) . In 1814 he was secretary to the Ambassador of the Elector of Hesse at Paris, and later on in the same year attended in a similar capacity the Congress of Vienna. While in Paris he claimed, by order of the Prussian government, the restoration of valuable manuscripts and books which had been removed to Paris by the armies of Napoleon I. In 1829 he, jointly with his brother Wilhelm, received the appointment of professor of German literature and librarian of the University of Göttingen. The brothers were among the seven professors who protested in 1837 against the abolition of the constitution by the King of Hanover, for which act they were banished and obliged to retire to Cassel. In 1840 both were invited to Berlin by the King of Prussia, where as members of the Academy they were entitled to give lectures. Jakob was in 1848 elected member of the Frankfort Parliament. He was, however, with all his interest in political affairs, averse to party strife, and his life was devoted to philological and antiquarian studies. His German Grammar, in four volumes, the first volume of which was published in 1819, and the last in 1837 (4th ed., 1870-98), is one of the greatest philological works of the age and may be said to have laid the foundation of the historical investigation of language. His Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer (1828; 4th ed., by Hensler and Hübner, 1899) and Deutsche Mythotogie (1835) are exhaustive works upon the society of the Middle Ages in central Europe arid the religious traditions and superstitions from the earliest times. His Geschichte der deutschen Spraehe (1848; 4th ed., 1880) and Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache (1851) are also works of great importance. In company with his brother Wilhelm he published numerous works of a more popular character, the best known of which is Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812-15; 5th ed., 1843; 47th ed., 1906). The greatest joint undertaking of the two brothers (now carried on by other scholars) is the Deutsches Wörterbuch, begun in 1852, of which the latest volume to appear is the fifteenth (1913). Gammer Grethel's Fairy Tales was published in 1862. His essays and other articles have been gathered together in the collection entitled Kleinere Schriften (8 vols., Berlin and Gütersloh, 1864-90). In vol. i of this series may be found the well-known Selbstbiographie, in which his life may be best studied. The following collections of the letters of Jakob and Wilhelm may be noted: Briefwechsel aus der Jugendzeit, ed. by H. Grimm and Hinrichs (Weimar, 1881); Briefwechsel mit nordischen Gelehrten, ed. by Schmidt (Berlin, 1885); Briefwechsel, ed. by Ippel (ib., 1886-86); Briefe au G. F. Benecke, 1808-29, ed. by Müller (Göttingen, 1889); Acht Briefe, ed. by Clausen in Euphorion (Vienna, 1907). Consult: Duncker, Die Brüder Grimm (Kassel, 1884); Francke, Die Brüder Grimm: ihr Leben uud Wirken in gemeinfasslicher Weise dargestellt (Dresden, 1899); Scherer, Jakob Grimm (Berlin, 1885); Tonnelat, Les frères Grimm, leur œuvre de jeunesse (Paris, 1912); Les eontes des frères Grimm, étude sur la composition, et le style die recueil des Kinder- und Hausmärchen (ib., 1912).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. X (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 386-387.