NATIONALISTIC ASPECTS of the GRIMM BROTHERS' FAIRY TALES* Department Oj History, College of the City of New York

The Journal of Social Psychology, 1951, 33, 209-223. NATIONALISTIC ASPECTS OF THE GRIMM BROTHERS' FAIRY TALES* Department oj History, College of the City of New York LOUIS L. SNYDER A. INTRODUCTION "Not a narrow nationalism but the philosophic romanticism of Schelling, Gories, Cruezer and Kanne, the view that the mythos glimpsed more of truth than reason, impelled the brothers Grimm to make such great collections of folk poetry as the Kinder- und Hausmdrchen" (30, p 173). And again: "The brothers Grimm had no thought of breeding an overweening nationalism, but rather of paving the way for a profounder comprehension of German character, a national self-knowledge" (30, p. 174). These two conclusions, reached in 1937 by Rudolf Stadelmann, then of the University of Freiburg i. Br., tend to relieve the famed German philologists, founders of scientific Germanistics, of the onus of "narrow" and "overweening" nationalism that has caused an enormous amount of trouble in recent years. Since nationalism has become for the European of our age "the most important thing in the world, more important than civilization, humanity, de- cency, kindness, pity, more important than life itself" (Sir Norman Angell), and since nationalism, far from weakening, is growing even more stronger as nations everywhere grow more national in thought and in deed, an examination of nationalistic aspects of the work of the two gifted brothers would seem to be in order. Did nationalism, whether narrow or wide, play a vital role in the lives and works of the brothers Grimm? Did they venerate national, indigenous, anonymous folk poetry merely on esthetic grounds or in the belief that it contained primitive folk wisdom which became peculiarly German in character? Is there any evidence to show that the Hausmdrchen, though beloved among many generations of children all over the world, were designed origi- nally to stimulate German national sentiment and to glorify German national traditions? Die BrUder Grimm, Jakob Ludwig Karl (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Karl (1786-1859), are inseparably linked in the history of German antiquarian- *Accepted for publication by Gardner Murphy of the Editorial Board, and received in the Editorial Office on January 20, 1950. 209 210 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY ism, philology, and folklore. The two were together all their lives. As children they slept in the same bed and worked at the same table, as stu- dents they had two beds and tables in the same room. Even after Wilhelm's marriage in 1825, Uncle Jakob shared the house, and they both lived "in such harmony and community that one might almost imagine the two children were common property" (5, p. lxix). The two scholars eventually became leaders of that band of distinguished men who in the nineteenth century devoted themselves to the scientific study of German language and literature and who, at the same time, fashioned the early framework of philology which was used later by some of the linguistic paleontologists in their search for the elusive Aryan by "race" (28, pp. 65-66). There is versatile genius here, for it is not usual for the same minds to evolve an authoritative grammar and a book of popular fairy tales (29). Most of the major works of the Grimm brothers stressed national indigenous literature, such as their great collections of folk poetry, as well as their standard works on tbe history of the Germanic languages, law, folklore, and com- parative mythology. Tbe Grimms were certain that every language has its own peculiar spirit standing in mysterious relationship to the national character. They preferred knowledge of native literature to all foreign lore, because "we can grasp nothing else as surely as our innate powers" and because "Nature herself guides us towards the Fatherland" (30, p. 174). From the beginning tbey were attracted by all national poetry, either epics, ballads, or popular tales, and they received full satisfaction in the study of the language, traditions, mythology, and laws of their countrymen. B. EVIDENCE OF NATIONALISM IN THE LIVES OF THE GRIMM BROTHERS When Jakob in 1805 visited the libraries of Paris, he quickly became homesick and wrote to his brother that he always dreamed of the Fatherland: "At night I am always home in Germany" (21, p. 45). Four years later he informed Wilhelm that he would not go to a certain vacation resort "because there are too many Frenchmen there" (21, p. 52). After watching ?. festival bonfire in 1814, he wrote to Wilhelm: "I wished that a colossal Bonaparte, a Puppe aus Heu, be thrown ceremoniously into the fire and burned" (21, p. 48). When his friend Benecke received a call to Edin- burgh in 1821 and asked for his advice, Jakob replied: "I cannot advise you but I can say that, if I were in your place, 1 would not emigrate. That would be a difficult thing" (21, p. 45). In his inaugural lecture at Got- tingen, Jakob wrote: "The love for the Fatherland is so godlike and so deeply impressed a feeling in every human breast that it is not weakened LOUIS L. SNYDER 211 but rather strengthened by the sorrows and misfortunes that happen to us in the land of our birth" (10). When Bettina in 1838 sought to get the Grimms positions in France after the}^ had been dismissed at Gottingen, Wilhelm Grimm wrote to Dahlmann: "What's the use of doing it? What can become of the matter? All our work would be paralyzed and extin- guished in short order if we renounced our Fatherland" (21, p. 46). In 1817 the brothers went to Gottingen, where Jakob received an ap- pointment as professor and librarian, Wilhelm as under-librarian. In 1837 they were among the "Gottinger Sieben" who signed a protest against the king of Hanover's abrogation of the constitution. Both were dismissed from their positions and banished from the kingdom of Hanover (34, pp. 407-408; 33, p. 195; 21, pp. 25-34). On the surface the protest of the Grimms seems to have been motivated by liberal sentiment, but actually they had no extreme faith in parliamentary government. To them consti- tutions had a negative value—as dikes against a devastating flood, while positive fertility was given by the benevolent grace of a monarch (15, p. 10). Wilhelm IV has established a constitution and Ernst had by two successive decrees revoked it. In the sight of the Grimms, Ernst had perjured himself, and it was the duty of Georgia Augusta, the University of Gottingen, to protest (15, p. 10). In 1840 Jakob wrote to Lachmann: "Der Welt bin ich nicht feind and hange heiss an allem Vaterldndischen" (21, p. 49). In his dedication to his Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, Jakob Grimm confessed that his book was meant to be political, since the German people had been respon- sible for throwing off the Roman 5'oke, bringing "fresh freedom to the Romans in Gaul, Italy, Spain,, and Britain," and with their own strength decided the victory of Christianity "by erecting an unbreakable wall against the constantly pressing Slavs in Europe's middle" (21, pp. 43-57). "All my works," Jakob wrote later in one of his last essays, "relate to the Father- land, from whose soil they derive their strength" (9, p. 61). The distinguished scholar of modern nationalism, Hans Kohn, concludes that "Jakob Grimm, one of the most violent Pan-Germans, expressed his confi- dence that the peace and salvation of the whole continent will rest upon Germany's strength and freedom" (16, p. 194)., C. ROMANTICISM AND GERMAN NATIONALISM E'rom the outset the Grimm brothers took the Romantic position which was closely allied with the rising German nationalism. Following closely upon the lead of the early Romantics—the Schlegel brothers, Ludwig Tieck, 212 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Novalis, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, the Grimms in their philological investigations sought to unlock the poetry and the experi- ences of the German people, which were encased in words and grammatical forms (19, p. 4). Many of the German Romantics saw their organic- genetic conception of culture as the expression of the Germanic national soul (7, p. 234), which had its beginning in the heroic Middle Ages (25, pp. 46 et. seq.). Like the Romantics the Grimms issued a plea for the claims of the imagination, of emotion and feeling, of individualism, and above all for a synthetic expression of the national genius in all its manifold aspects of literature, art, religion, and philosophy (35). But where the Romantics enriched the imagination by presenting the many-colored life of other ages and countries, they remained mostly artists and poets, not scholars, philologists, and historians; the Grimms, on the other hand, functioned in the Romantic circle by giving to it the critical scholarship that hitherto had been lacking (9, p. 54). "I strove to penetrate into the wild forests of our ancestors," wrote Wilhelm Grimm, "listening to their whole language, and watching their pure customs" (12, p. 942). As a group the Romantics pro- foundly venerated folk poetry and especially the fairy tale (13, p. 8). Novalis pronounced the folk tale the primary and highest creation of man (4, p. 834). Even the great Schiller had written in extravagant terms (26, p. 317). Tiefere Bedeutung Liegt in dem Mdrchen meiner Kinderjahre, A Is in der Wahrheit, die das Leben lehrt. It was this type of romanticism, stressing folk language, customs, personality, and the idea of Volksgeineinschaft, or community of the people, which was an important factor in the historical evolution of modern nationalism. D. PLANNING AND PUBLICATION OF THE FAIRY TALES The idea for a collection of children's stories may be traced directly to Herder, who in .1773 aroused immediate attention to folk literature with an essay entitled Ossian und die Lieder alter Volker (18, p.

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