Grimm facts

None, if any writers, have compiled as many enduring fairy tales – many graduating from the written word to the silver screen – as the Brothers Grimm. Among this cornucopia are the following: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel. But these are just a few of the more than 200 children’s stories which German brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm wrote and compiled starting with the first edition of their Children’s and Household Tales in 1812. Nationalistic in the extreme and living during the turbulent Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), the brothers tweaked a number of their tales’ characters to reflect an idealised German or Aryan identity. For example, the title of the story, The Little Brother and the Little Sister was changed to the more German-sounding Hansel and Gretal. More than a century later, Third Reich Führer, Adolf Hitler, a fan of that story, issued a decree that it be taught in every school across Germany.