Jacob
Grimm (on the right, above) is, of course, well-known for the collection
of fairy tales and songs that he compiled with his brother Wilhelm.
Stories such as "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty"
were first written down by the Brothers Grimm. However, the two of them
were also scholars. Wilhelm focussed on literary studies, while Jacob
was a philologist.
He is best known for dealing with how the consonants of various Indo-European
languages related to one another. When we looked at William Jones, we
hinted at some of the relationships between the languages. For example,
Latin 'p' in 'pater' became 'f' in Germanic languages, e.g. 'father'.
Greek 't' in 'treis' became 'th' in English 'three'.
The patterns that he noted have become known as Grimm's law. He formalized
the following changes in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) to later languages:
Jacob Grimm
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (January 4, 1785 – September 20, 1863),
German philologist and mythologist, was born at Hanau, in Hesse-Kassel.
Life
His father, who was a lawyer, died while he was a child, and the mother
was left with very small means; but her sister, who was lady of the
chamber to the Iandgravine of Hesse, helped to support and educate her
numerous family. Jacob, with his younger brother Wilhelm (born on February
24, 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 Savigny, the celebrated investigator of Roman
law, who, as Grimm himself says (in the preface to the Deutsche Grammatik),
first taught him to realize what it meant to study any science. Savigny's
lectures also awakened in him that love for historical and antiquarian
investigation which forms the basis of all his work. Then followed personal
acquaintance, and it was in Savigny's well-provided 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 situation 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 Jerome 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. On 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. So 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 extempore — 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 which abound 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 together with his
brother, who had also signed the protest, and 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 best known of these are those on Lachmann, Schiller, and his brother
Wilhelm (who died in 1859), on 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 1863, working even at the end. He was never 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 which 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."
The purely scientific side of Grimm's character developed slowly. He
seems to have felt the want of definite principles of etymology 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 AW 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.
The first work Jacob Grimm published, Uber den altdeutschen Meistergesang
(1811), was of a purely literary character. Yet even in this essay Grimm
showed that Minnesang 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.
His 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 an analysis and critical sifting of the oldest epic
traditions of the Germanic races under the title of Deutsche Sagen.
At the same time they collected all the popular tales 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 which has carried the name of the brothers Grimm
into every household of the civilized world, and which founded the science
of folk-lore. 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 Eddaic 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 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 decay and loss down to the popular traditions,
tales and expressions in which they still linger.
Although, by the introduction of the Code Napoleon into Westphalia,
Grimm's legal studies were made practically useless, he never lost his
interest in the scientific study of law and national institutions as
the truest exponents of the life and character of a people. By the publication
(in 1828) of his Rechtsalterthumer, he laid the foundations of historical
study of the old Teutonic laws and constitutions which was continued
with brilliant success by Georg L Maurer and others. In this work Grimm
showed the importance of linguistic study of the old laws, and the light
that can be thrown on many a dark passage in them by a comparison of
the corresponding words and expressions in the other old cognate dialects.
He also knew how (and this is perhaps the most original and valuable
part of his work) to trace the spirit of the laws in countless allusions
and sayings which occur in the old poems and sagas, and even survive
in modern colloquialisms.
Of all his more general works the boldest and most far-reaching was
his Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, in which the linguistic elements
are emphasized. The subject of the work is, indeed, nothing less than
the history which lies 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 Getae,
Tifracians, Scythians, and many other nations whose languages are known
only by 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
which now characterize linguistic science, and many of the questions
raised by him will probably for ever remain obscure; but his book will
always be one of the most fruitful and suggestive that has ever been
written.
Grimm's famous Deutsche Grammatik 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 shape 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 Teutonic grammar had
been clearly grasped by the illustrious Englishman George Hickes 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 Teutonic 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 the Low German dialects
including English, and that the rich literature of Scandinavia could
not 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 which
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 an even 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 only be estimated at its true
value 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 a main inducement for him 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 which had hitherto been ignored by etymologists).
This leads to a question which has been the subject of much controversy,
"Who discovered what is known as Grimm's law?" This law of
the correspondence of consonants in the older Indogermanic, and Low
and High German languages 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, but the one who came nearest to the discovery of the complete
law was the Swede Johan Ihre, who established a considerable number
of literarum permutationes, such as b for f, with the examples ba~ra
=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. Rask himself refers
very little to Ihre, merely alluding in a general way to Ihres permutations,
although his own debt to Ihre is infinitely greater than that of Grimm
to Rask or to any one else. It is true that a certain bitterness of
feeling afterwards sprang up between Grimm and Rask, but this was the
fault of the latter, who, impatient of contradiction and irritable in
controversy, refused to acknowledge the value of Grimm's views when
they involved modification of his own.
The importance of Grimm's generalization in the history of philology
cannot be overestimated, and even the mystic completeness and symmetry
of its formulation, although it has proved a hindrance to the correct
explanation of the causes of the changes, was well calculated to strike
the popular mind, and give it a vivid idea of the paramount importance
of law, and the necessity of disregarding mere superficial resemblance.
The most lawless etymologist bows down to the authority of Grimm's law,
even if he honors it almost as much in the breach as in the observance.
The grammar was continued in three volumes, treating principally derivation,
composition and syntax, the last of which was left 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-Germanic languages in general.
In the great German dictionary Grimm undertook a task for which he was
hardly suited. His exclusively historical tendencies made it impossible
for him to do justice to the individuality of a living language; and
the disconnected statement of the facts of language in an ordinary alphabetical
dictionary fatally mars its scientific character. It was also 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, may be described as a collection of disconnected antiquarian
essays of high value.
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 some one author, period, or corner
of science, as he was from the shallow dabbler who feverishly attempts
to master the details of half-a-dozen discordant pursuits. Even within
his own special studies there is the same wise concentration; no Mezzofanti-like
display of polyglottism. 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 unerring
instinct would allow. He was equally fortunate in the harmony that existed
between his intellectual and moral nature. He made cheerfully the heavy
sacrifices that science demands from its disciples, without feeling
any of that envy and bitterness which often torment weaker souls; although
he lived apart from his fellow men, he was full of human sympathies,
and no man has ever exercised a profounder influence on the destinies
of mankind. His was the very ideal of the noblest type of German character.
The following is a complete list of his separately published works,
those which he published in common with his brother being 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).
Wilhelm Carl Grimm, third son, was born on February 24, 1786. Jacob
Ludwig Carl Grimm, second son, was born on January 4, 1785. The Grimms
were born at Hanau in Hasse-Kassel to Philipp Wilhelm Grimm and Dorothea
Zimmer. The family consisted of nine children, eight boys and one girl.
In 1791, the family moved to Steinau, Germany to live for seven years
("Grimm" 307-308).
Their first life-altering event occurred in 1796 with the death of their
father. Preceded in death by three of his sons, Philipp's status as
a lawyer had diminished. His death "declassed his wife and children
overnight" forcing the family to poverty ("Jakob" 192).
In support of their family the Grimm brothers set out to Kassel to fill
requirements necessary for university admission. Hoping to follow in
their father's footsteps the brothers attended law school at the University
of Marburg beginning in 1802. In 1806, Wilhelm had received his degree
in law while Jacob had dropped out of school moving to Paris to study
with Friedrich Karl von Savigny, expert in Roman law. In 1808, the Grimms
mother died bringing Jacob home from Paris. After Jacob's numerous positions
as a librarian in Paris and his current position in Wilhelmshöhe,
the brothers began collecting their tales. Achim von Arnim and Clemens
Brentano published a few of Wilhelm and Jacob's tales in their journal
Zeitung für Einsiedler. After many years of supporting their three
brothers and sister, Jacob received a job at the Council of State for
the purpose of earning more money (Bottigheimer 102, 109).
Since the beginning of the 1800's the Grimms had been collecting fairy
tales from the people of Hesse and surrounding areas including friends
and relatives. A local peasant named Marie Muller was a well-known storyteller
and one of the Grimms' favorites. In 1812, the Grimm Brothers published
their first volume of Kinder-und Hausmärchen. This volume was made
up of eighty-six stories and folktales. Two years later in 1814, volume
two of Kinder-und Hausmärchen was published. In the second volume
there were seventy stories and folktales added to the original eighty-six.
In its entirety, Kinder-und Hausmärchen would see eight editions,
the final containing 200 stories and folktales and 10 children's legends
(Ashliman 2-3).
In 1813, conflicts of belief between the French and the central European
countries grew stronger. The European countries gained power and forced
Napoleon and the French out of Germany. During this period, Jacob became
a legation secretary for Hessian diplomats and Wilhelm an assistant
librarian for the library in Kassel. Two years later Jacob joined his
brother as a librarian in Kassel.
Between the years 1816 and 1818 the Grimms published Deutsche Sagen
in two volumes. Within these volumes there are "585 counted German
Legends" (Ashliman 3).
After achieving much success they were recognized for their scholarly
work in 1819 with honorary doctorates from Marburg University. In 1825
Wilhelm married Henriette Dorothea Wild, a woman from whom he collected
stories. The couple had four children, three sons and a daughter. Between
1829 and 1830 Wilhelm resigned from Kassel taking a position as librarian
and professor at Göttingen University. Jacob soon followed. In
1830 Wilhelm realized that his health and family's finances were not
stable. In 1835 he accepted a position as Ordentlicher Professor ensuring
financial stability for his family. From the time period 1837-1841,
the Grimm brothers take a stand with five colleagues against Ernst August
king of Hannover about the conflict of a constitutional right. As a
result, the seven lost their jobs and the Grimms accepted jobs at the
University of Berlin. They were known as the Göttingen Seven (Ashliman
3)
1838 began the work on the thirty-two volumes of Deutsches Wörterbuch.
This German dictionary focuses on history instead of appropriate language
(Bottigheimer 104). Within the next ten years the Grimms resigned from
their teaching at the university of Berlin to devote their time to the
completion of the German dictionary. Wilhelm died on December 16, 1859
and Jacob on September 20, 1863. The two "fairytale brothers"
did not live to see the final edition their German dictionary (Ashliman
3).