Editing Brothers Grimm (section)

== Philology ==
[[File:Pied Piper2.jpg|thumb|300px|left|{{lang|de|[[Deutsche Sagen]]}} (''German Legends'') included stories such as "[[Pied Piper of Hamelin]]", shown here in an illustration by [[Kate Greenaway]].]]
While at the [[University of Marburg]], the brothers came to see culture as tied to language and regarded the purest cultural expression in the [[grammar]] of a language. They moved away from Brentano's practice—and that of the other romanticists—who frequently changed original oral styles of folk tale to a more literary style, which the brothers considered artificial. They thought that the style of the people (the {{lang|de|volk}}) reflected a natural and divinely inspired poetry ({{lang|de|naturpoesie}})—as opposed to the {{lang|de|kunstpoesie}} (art poetry), which they saw as artificially constructed.<ref name="Z(1988)32ff" /><ref name="D84ff">{{Harvnb|Dégh|1979|pp=84–85}}</ref> As literary historians and scholars they delved into the origins of stories and attempted to retrieve them from the oral tradition without loss of the original traits of oral language.<ref name="Z(1988)32ff">{{Harvnb|Zipes|1988|pp=32–35}}</ref>

[[File:German dictionary.jpg|thumb|upright|Frontispiece of 1854 edition of ''German Dictionary'' ({{lang|de|Deutsches Wörterbuch}})]]

The brothers strongly believed that the dream of national unity and independence relied on a full knowledge of the cultural past that was reflected in folklore.<ref name="D84ff" /> They worked to discover and crystallize a kind of Germanness in the stories they collected in the belief that folklore contained kernels of mythologies and legends crucial to understanding the essence of German culture.<ref name="Txxxff" /> In examining culture from a philological point of view they sought to establish connections between German law, culture, and local beliefs.<ref name="Z(1988)32ff" />

The Grimms considered the tales to have origins in traditional Germanic folklore, which they thought had been "contaminated" by later literary tradition.<ref name="Txxxff" /> In the shift from the oral tradition to the printed book, tales were translated from regional dialects to [[Standard German]] ({{lang|de|Hochdeutsch}} or High German).<ref>{{Harvnb|Zipes|1994|p=14}}</ref> But over the course of the many modifications and revisions, the Grimms sought to reintroduce regionalisms, dialects, and [[Low German]] to the tales—to reintroduce the language of the original form of the oral tale.<ref>{{Harvnb|Robinson|2004|pp=47–49}}</ref>

As early as 1812 they published {{lang|de|Die beiden ältesten deutschen Gedichte aus dem achten Jahrhundert: Das Lied von Hildebrand und Hadubrand und das Weißenbrunner Gebet}} (''The Two Oldest German Poems of the Eighth Century: The Song of Hildebrand and Hadubrand and the Wessobrunn Prayer''); the ''[[Wessobrunn Prayer]]'' is a ninth-century German prayer, while the ''[[Lay of Hildebrand|Song of Hildebrand and Hadubrand]]'' is the earliest-known German heroic song.<ref name="Hettinga" />

Between 1816 and 1818 the brothers published a two-volume work, {{lang|de|[[Deutsche Sagen]]}} (''German Legends''), consisting of 585 German legends.<ref name="Michaelis-Jena">{{Harvnb|Michaelis-Jena|1970|p=84}}</ref> Jacob undertook most of the work of collecting and editing the legends, which he organized according to region and historical (ancient) legends<ref name="H429ff" /> and were about real people or events.<ref name="Hettinga" /> The brothers meant it as a scholarly work, but the historical legends were often taken from secondary sources, interpreted, modified, and rewritten—resulting in works "that were regarded as trademarks".<ref name="H429ff" /> Some scholars criticized the Grimms' methodology in collecting and rewriting the legends, yet conceptually they set an example for legend collections that was followed by others throughout Europe. Unlike the collection of folk tales, {{lang|de|Deutsche Sagen}} sold poorly,<ref name="H429ff">{{Harvnb|Haase|2008|pp=429–431}}</ref> but Zipes says that the collection, translated to French and Danish in the 19th century but not to English until 1981, is a "vital source for folklorists and critics alike".<ref>{{Harvnb|Zipes|1984|p=162}}</ref>

Less well known in the English-speaking world is the Grimms' pioneering scholarly work on a German dictionary, the {{lang|de|[[Deutsches Wörterbuch]]}}, which they began in 1838. Not until 1852 did they begin publishing the dictionary in installments.<ref name="H429ff" /> The work on the dictionary was not finished in their lifetimes, because in it they gave a history and analysis of each word.<ref name="Hettinga" />