1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Marburg and Kassel – A Tale of the Brothers Grimm

December 8, 2012

December 20, 2012, is the 200th anniversary of the publishing of the first volume of the Brothers Grimm’s "Children’s and Household Tales".

https://p.dw.com/p/16uiZ
Cinderella’s slipper in Marburg
Cinderella’s slipper in Marburg

Their famous collection of folk and fairy tales has been translated into 160 languages and is on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register for the preservation of cultural documents.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm aren’t known only for their 86 fairy tale classics such as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Snow White", but also as linguists. As students in Marburg, they were enthusiastic scholars of German philology, researching dialects and grammar. In this anniversary year, the university town commemorates them in many places and ways, including with monumental sculptures such as Cinderella’s slipper. In their home in Hessen, the brothers also began to collect and write down tales that had until then only been handed down orally. Their extensive life’s work is exhibited in the Brothers Grimm Museum in Kassel, where they lived for many years. From there, it’s not far to Reinhardswald forest, and the castle of Sababurg, which looks as if it could be right out of the fairy tale of "Sleeping Beauty".

Marburg and Kassel - A Tale of the Brothers Grimm