The Brothers Grimm

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2009

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg discusses the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm with Juliette Wood, Marina Warner and Tony Phelan. The German siblings who in 1812 published a collection of fairy tales including Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin. But the Grimm versions are surprisingly, sometimes shockingly, different. Cinderella has no fairy godmother, her ugly sisters are not ugly but they do have their eyes pecked out by pigeons. Sleeping Beauty does not have an evil stepmother, Rapunzel is pregnant and Frog Princes do not get kissed but thrown against walls. They may not be the fairy tales as we know them, but without the Brothers Grimm we might not know them at all. But why did two respectable German linguists go chasing after fairy stories, what do the stories tell us about German culture and romantic nationalism at the time and why do these ever-evolving tales of horror, wonder and fantasy continue to hold us in thrall?With Juliette Wood, Associate Lecturer in Folklore at Cardiff University; Marina Warner, Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex; Tony Phelan, Professor in German at Keble College, Oxford.

Transcript

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0:45.6	Hello Cinderella does not have a fairy godmother sleeping beauty does not have an evil stepmother
0:50.9	Rapunzel is pregnant and frog princes do not get
0:54.5	kissed but thrown against walls and that's only the tip of the horror. This is the
0:59.3	world of her brother's grim. Two German siblings who in 1812 published a collection of fairies tales or rather wonder tales including Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Bromple Stidskin and Rap They may not be the fairy tales as we know them now, but without the brothers grim we might not know them at all with all their horror, wonder and fantasy.
1:18.0	But why did two respectable German linguists go chasing after such stories? What do the stories tell us about German
1:23.9	culture and nationalism at the time in both of which they had a big say? With me to
1:28.6	discuss the brothers, Graham, Tony Phelan, Professor in German Keeble College
1:32.0	Oxford, Marina Warner, Professor in the Department of Literature, Dr. focal at Cardiff University. Julie Wood, can you tell us about the brothers Grimm?
1:44.1	Yes, beginning of Germany or the beginning of the rise of a sense of Germany and
1:50.0	they were very interested in their past and they were very interested in finding an authentic German past.
	...

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