When the subject of fairy tales is brought up, the names Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm are inevitably mentioned as they have long been credited as some of the most important folktale preservers in history. Having witnessed traumatizing events like the Napoleonic Wars and familial plights like losing their father, they were deeply affected by pain in their youth. In an effort to make sense of the world, they rose above those problems to release the first edition of their Children and Household Tales in December 1812 and went on to publish seven major editions of these fairytale collections in their lifetimes. The tales warmed the hearts of children and adults alike, making them a global phenomenon. Many scholars discuss the achievements of the brothers in order to understand why and how they even conceived the ideas behind their works. Two trends that occurred during the brothers’ timeline, Romanticism and nationalism, became the two main movements considered in this process.
Specifically, their focus on the individual and emotions seemingly epitomizes Romantic beliefs, thus leading some scholars to deem the brothers’ successful anthologies as byproducts of Romanticism. The Romantic era was described as “an emphasis on feeling, individuality, and passion rather than classical form and order, and typically preferring grandeur, picturesqueness, or naturalness to finish and proportion” (“Romantic”). What began in the late eighteenth century trickled its way into the nineteenth century when the brothers became writers. Plenty of scholars associate the brothers with the Romantic era because the growing European trend generally was popular for literature enthusiasts like the brothers and their counterparts. Moreover, the Grimms’ tales reflect the importance of the human experience, further endorsing the theory that it was really Romanticism that propelled the siblings into the preservation of German lore.
Yet, the fascination with the individual’s experience and the normal person as an entity is also the hallmark of nationalism. In the years following the French Revolution, however, and especially as the French occupied German lands that were maintaining their identities as a group of sovereign states that had difficulty defying French forces, German nationalism became a growing and powerful movement (Smith). The Grimms, like many other Germans, wanted to establish a national identity in order to prevent the reappearance of the political turmoil that haunted them from childhood into adulthood. They clung onto their dark pasts in the tales they published, especially before they realized that such grim themes would not appeal to a wide German audience, a topic that I will discuss in greater detail. So, while many scholars attach the brothers’ drive to the Romantic era, other scholars pinpoint the brothers’ momentum as a byproduct of nationalism.
The binary established by previous scholarship is a confounding assertion since it is clear that both movements can be the main drive behind the brothers’ works as the Brothers Grimm were intrigued by the human experience, especially after being inspired by their own. The political and emotional stress they felt as young children during and after the Napoleonic Wars led the Brothers Grimm to use their anthologies as coping mechanisms. The trauma the two brothers shouldered was reflected in the obscurity of their themes and graphicness of their stories, something that I will discuss in greater detail with regard to the sanitization of their tales. This emotional disturbance from their youth complicates the discussion of which of the two movements roused the duo to accomplish what they did as folklorists. They used elements of Romanticism like the highlighting of emotions and combined with the patriotic sentiments of nationalism to bring their trauma to light as well as to make sense of it. So, it is worth arguing that what has been debated offers an “either-or” fallacy; nationalism and Romanticism serve as partners in pushing the Kinder-und Hausmärchen to literary fame.
In particular, while it is true that it is understood that the Brothers Grimm’s work had an innate connection to Romanticism at the start, this does not mean that nationalism is not as important of an influence on the Grimms as Romanticism after it came to the foreground too. The brothers were indeed initially inspired and motivated by the budding Romantic trends and only began seriously collecting tales when aiding Clemens Brentano, a Romantic writer (Zipes, “How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale”). However, it is not fair to assume that the duo’s theme of nationalism emerged from their original interest in Romanticism. Specifically, while one can offer the viewpoint that the embryonic Romantic endeavors of collecting texts for Brentano led the brothers down the nationalistic path, particularly honing in on the idea of authenticity and commercial success, something that the brothers juggled throughout their different editions of the folktale collections (Zipes, “How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale”), it is hard to ignore how nationalism emerged as, at the very least, an equal counterpart to Romanticism in the duo’s compositions. Both movements express the importance of the human experience, and it is viable to assume that both movements interacted with each other in complicated ways in the creation of the brothers’ anthologies.
This is not to say that it is completely unreasonable to assert that it was nationalism conceived from Romanticism that drove the brothers’ tales into an international canon. It is simply worth observing that even though the brothers were initially inspired and motivated by the budding Romantic trends that arrived in Germany during their creative years, they were actually more driven by the desire to represent Germany as culturally rich in order to unify the German people amidst political turmoil during and after the Napoleonic era. I acknowledge that Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm were indeed moved by the Romantic era, and to ignore that in favor of the idea that the brothers were pure nationalists without any Romantic influences is too generalized of an argument. The argument I make here is that while the brothers may have begun with Romanticism in mind, it was nationalism that shined through in their works in the end.
Romanticism and nationalism are not mutually exclusive as Romantic elements bled into the nationalistic policy and cultural agenda of national unity. Specifically, the brothers were inspired not only by Romanticism, a style of writing during that period that they have so long been associated with, as they were always motivated by nationalism and the desire to unify Germans after political and cultural unrest. Thus, what began as a Romantic-movement project was co-opted to promote national pride and identity from the perspective of patriarchal and Christian values. Over-editing and sanitization spun their innately German text, one that solidified the shared cultural characteristics of the country through Romantic influences as well as the core nationalism, into something that inadvertently popularized their stories into international phenomena.