Intro

Hello and Welcome to this 150TH episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.

I’m Jans your Mnemonic Man and today's episode will be on the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Born in Hanau, Germany in the late 1800’s one year apart, the brothers both pursued careers in law before being drawn to the collection of folklore and fairy tales.

This culminated in their most famous work “Grimms’ Fairy Tales” which was first published in 1812 and contained 86 folk tales. This evolved and their seventh and last edition of “Grimms’ Fairy Tales” contained 200 fairy tales.

These fairy tales include some of the most well known and loved stories in history. Stories that we all grew up with such as “Cinderella," "Snow White," "Hansel and Gretel," “Tom Thumb,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Rapunzel,” and “Rumpelstiltskin,” which is just to name a few.

Their original aim was to preserve German cultural heritage and language for fear that it would be lost at a time of political and social instability. The brothers also authored a comprehensive German dictionary but unfortunately, they did not live to see its completion.

Their stories and fairy tales have been adapted into countless films, plays and books and echoed through different cultures from all around the world.

Today’s mnemonic will be on the Brothers Grimm top 5 fairy tales.

So, with that being said, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grimm.jpg

Wikipedia Summary

The Brothers Grimm (die Brüder Grimm or die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of folktales, popularizing stories such as "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel"), "The Frog Prince" ("Der Froschkönig"), "Hansel and Gretel" ("Hänsel und Gretel"), "Town Musicians of Bremen" ("Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten"), "Little Red Riding Hood" ("Rotkäppchen"), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" ("Rumpelstilzchen"), "Sleeping Beauty" ("Dornröschen"), and "Snow White" ("Schneewittchen"). Their first collection of folktales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), began publication in 1812.

The Brothers Grimm spent their formative years in the town of Hanau in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. Their father's death in 1796 (when Jacob was 11 and Wilhelm was 10) caused great poverty for the family and affected the brothers many years after. Both brothers attended the University of Marburg, where they developed a curiosity about German folklore, which grew into a lifelong dedication to collecting German folktales.

The rise of Romanticism in 19th-century Europe revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the Brothers Grimm represented a pure form of national literature and culture. With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folktales, they established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. Between 1812 and 1857 their first collection was revised and republished many times, growing from 86 stories to more than 200. In addition to writing and modifying folktales, the brothers wrote collections of well-respected Germanic and Scandinavian mythologies, and in 1838 they began writing a definitive German dictionary (Deutsches Wörterbuch), which they were unable to finish.

The popularity of the Grimms' collected folktales has endured. They are available in more than 100 translations and have been adapted by renowned filmmakers, including Lotte Reiniger and Walt Disney, in films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the mid-20th century, Nazi Germany used the tales as propaganda; later in the 20th century, psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim reaffirmed the work's value despite the cruelty and violence in some of the tales' original versions, which were eventually sanitized by the Grimms themselves.

Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kassel_Br%C3%BCder-Grimm-Denkmal.jpg

Mnemonic

Brothers Grimm – Top 5 Fairy Tales Mnemonic – Hanau CLaSS

(Picture the two Brothers Grimm, Jacob & Wilhelm reading and learning fairy tales when they were younger in their home town of Hanau)

1. Hansel and Gretel

2. Cinderella

3. Little Red Riding Hood

4. Sleeping Beauty

5. Snow White

Five Fun Facts

1. Jacob and Wilhelm were born one year apart in 1785 and 1786 respectively. The family consisted of nine children with only six making it to adulthood. Their early childhood was in relative comfort however after their father died, they were plunged into poverty and as a result a lower social status.

2. This lower social status made it very difficult to gain admission to university, but after a request for a special dispensation to attend they gained entry and studied law with the intent of becoming civil servants like their father. The law was not to last though, when they were drawn to study old German literature and thus began collecting texts.

3. The brothers Grimm began collecting folktales in 1807 but this was not for their project. They were helping the writer Clemens Brentano for his collection of folktales which was due for publication. Together between the years of 1807 to 1810 they collected 49 stories for Brentano for which he either forgot or abandoned his copies in a church. These copies were later found in 1920.

4. The Grimm brothers were also known as activists. The new King Ernest Augustus of Hanover was annulling the countries constitution to suit his own needs, and also demanding that civil servants sign an oath of fealty to him. The Grimm brothers resisted along with five others at the university who were dismissed from their posts and subsequently became known as the “Gottingen Seven.”

5. Many of the folktales had been passed down orally through many generations. Hence, the details can be vastly different from culture to culture but still contain the same general theme. For instance, Cinderella’s slippers are red leather in Egypt, while in China they are made of gold. The brothers would refine these stories to be both more cohesive and appealing to the masses.

Now, I remember a long time ago reading Cinderella to my ex. Thinking back, she really did make my life like a fairy tale … … … Grimm!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brothers_Grimm_Blow.jpg

Three Question Quiz

Q.1. What did the mother in "Cinderella" do to ensure that the golden slipper would fit on one of the step-sisters?

Q.2. In the story of “Rumpelstiltskin” a magical creature helps a girl spin which substance into gold? Options are cotton, wool, or straw

Q.3. In the story Hansel and Gretel what ate the trail of bread crumbs they created to mark their route?

Bonus Q. The Brothers Grimm included two stories about a small boy called “Thumbling.” In the English version of the story the child is known by what name?

Mnemonic Recap

Brothers Grimm – Top 5 Fairy Tales Mnemonic – Hanau CLaSS

(Picture the two Brothers Grimm, Jacob & Wilhelm reading and learning fairy tales when they were younger in their home town of Hanau)

1. Hansel and Gretel

2. Cinderella

3. Little Red Riding Hood

4. Sleeping Beauty

5. Snow White

Three Question Quiz Answers

Q.1. What did the mother in "Cinderella" do to ensure that the golden slipper would fit on one of the step-sisters?

A. Cut off her heel, while the other step-sister was told to cut off only her big toe!

Q.2. In the story of “Rumpelstiltskin” a magical creature helps a girl spin which substance into gold? Options are cotton, wool, or straw

A. Straw

Q.3. In the story Hansel and Gretel what ate the trail of bread crumbs they created to mark their route?

A. Birds

Bonus Q. The Brothers Grimm included two stories about a small boy called “Thumbling.” In the English version of the story the child is known by what name?

A. Tom Thumb

Word of the Week

credo

[ kree-doh ]

noun

a system of principles or beliefs

Example

The Brothers Grimm credo was to “excavate and preserve German cultural contributions made by the common people before the stories became extinct.”

Extracted from: [https://www.dictionary.com/]

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