National Acclaim

Despite the contention amongst scholars regarding which approach(es) the brothers took to gain national fame as writers and collectors, they can all agree that the brothers possessed a rare talent of appealing to many people’s deepest and purest emotions. David and David poetically note that “the stories are like children, have lived among children, and have been treasured and preserved within the family,” (181). So even though Romanticism and nationalism propelled the Grimms toward heartwarming stories that embody German-ness, it was the byproduct of these two movements that gave the brothers the relevance and significance in their contemporary German culture. Even more remarkable, however, is that the brothers maintained the core values of the people they united: “[t]his childlike sense of wonder and the moral simplicity that the Grimms saw in fairy tales were also qualities that they attributed to the earlier literature of the Germanic peoples, and it was primarily for what remained in them of the spiritual heritage of the past that Grimms collected folktales,” (David and David 181). This inherent understanding and accurate application of Germanic principles and ideals boosted the anthologies and their collectors into the national spotlight.