Editing Brothers Grimm (section)

== Reception and legacy ==
[[File:Gedenktafel Alte Potsdamer Str 5 (Tierg) Brüder Grimm.jpg|thumb|Berlin memorial plaque, {{lang|de|Brüder Grimm, Alte Potsdamer Straße 5, Berlin-Tiergarten}}, Germany]]
{{lang|de|Kinder- und Hausmärchen}} was not an immediate bestseller, but its popularity grew with each edition.<ref name="Z(1988)15ff" /> The early editions received lukewarm critical reviews, generally on the basis that the stories did not appeal to children. The brothers responded with modifications and rewrites to increase the book's market appeal to that demographic.<ref name="Txxxff" /> By the 1870s the tales had increased greatly in popularity to the point that they were added to the teaching curriculum in [[Prussia]]. In the 20th century the work was second only to the Bible as the most popular book in Germany. Its sales generated a mini-industry of critiques, which analyzed the tales' folkloric content in the context of literary history, socialism, and psychological elements often along [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] and [[Carl Jung|Jungian]] lines.<ref name="Z(1988)15ff">{{Harvnb|Zipes|1988|pp=15–17}}</ref>

In their research, the brothers made a science of the study of folklore (see [[folkloristics]]), generating a model of research that "launched general fieldwork in most European countries",<ref name="D87ff">{{Harvnb|Dégh|1979|p=87}}</ref> and setting standards for research and analysis of stories and legends that made them pioneers in the field of folklore in the 19th century.<ref>{{Harvnb|Zipes|1984|p=163}}</ref>

In [[Nazi Germany]] the Grimms' stories were used to foster nationalism as well as to promote antisemitic sentiments in an increasingly hostile time for Jewish people. Some examples of notable antisemitic works in the Grimms' bibliography are "[[The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews]]", "[[The Jews' Stone]]", "[[The Jew Among Thorns]]" and "[[The Good Bargain]]". "The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews" and "The Jews' Stone" tell stories of [[blood libel]] by Jews against innocent children. In both stories the children are violently killed and mutilated.<ref>Ashliman, D. L. (Trans.). "[https://web.archive.org/web/20200217170908/http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/antisemitic.html#stone Anti-Semitic Legends]".</ref> The myth of blood libel was widely propagated during the Middle Ages and is still used to vilify Jews today.<ref>Teter, M. (2020). "Introduction". In ''[http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvt1sj9x.6 Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth]'' (pp. 1–13). Harvard University Press.</ref> The children in these two stories are acquired in exchange for large sums of money; Jewish wealth and greed are also common antisemitic tropes.<ref>Foxman, Abraham (2010). Jews and Money: The Story of a Stereotype. New York: St. Martin's Press.</ref> These tropes appear in "The Jew Among Thorns" and "The Good Bargain". In both stories a Jewish man is depicted as deceitful for the sake of money. In the former the man admits to stealing money and is executed instead of the protagonist. In the latter, the Jewish man is found to be deceitful in order to be rewarded with a sum of money. The specific deceit is irrelevant and here too the protagonist triumphs over the Jew.<ref>The Brothers Grimm. (n.d.). The jew in the thorns. Grimm 110: The Jew in the Thorns. From https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm110.html </ref><ref>The Brothers Grimm. (n.d.). The good bargain. Grimm 007: The Good Bargain. From https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm007.html </ref> All these stories paint Jews as antagonists whether through murderous rites, deceit, or greed. Antisemitism in folklore has contributed to the popularization of antisemitic tropes and misconceptions about the Jewish faith, but the [[Nazi Party]] was particularly devoted to the Grimms' collected stories. According to author Elizabeth Dalton, "Nazi ideologues enshrined the ''Kinder- und Hausmärchen'' as virtually a sacred text". The Nazi Party decreed that every household should own a copy of {{lang|de|Kinder- und Hausmärchen}}; later, officials of [[Allied-occupied Germany]] banned the book for a period.<ref name="D95ff">{{Harvnb|Dégh|1979|pp=94–96}}</ref>

Blood libel tales accused Jews of stealing Christian children to perform religious rituals on them, and most notably, turn their blood into matzah. According to Robert Weinberg, Professor of Jewish History at Swarthmore College, “the accusation that Jews murder Christians, particularly young boys and girls, for ritual purposes has a long and lurid lineage that dates back to the Middle Ages. The accusation of ritual murder emerged in England in the mid-twelfth century with the charge that Jews had killed a Christian youth in order to mock the Passion of Christ. By the middle of the thirteenth century the belief that Jews killed Christians had spread to the European continent, where gentiles now accused Jews of desecrating the Host and using gentile blood for religious purposes, including consuming it in matzo.<ref>”WEINBERG, ROBERT. “The Blood Libel in Eastern Europe.” Jewish History 26, no. 3/4 (2012): 275–85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23352438.</ref> The concept of cruentation was also extremely prevalent in the Middle Ages. Cruentation described the phenomenon of a corpse spontaneously bleeding in the presence of its murderer.<ref>Resnick, Irven M. "Cruentation, Medieval Anti-Jewish Polemic, and Ritual Murder." Antisemitism Studies 3, no. 1 (Spring, 2019): 95-131, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/cruentation-medieval-anti-jewish-polemic-ritual/docview/2365187375/se-2.</ref> At this time, European Jews were often hunted down and murdered when a Christian child went missing and stories abounded that the victims, when found, would bleed in the presence of their Jewish killers.

In the United States the 1937 release of [[Walt Disney]]'s ''[[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)|Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs]]'' shows the triumph of good over evil, innocence over oppression, according to Zipes.<ref>{{Harvnb|Zipes|1988|p=25}}</ref> The Grimms' tales have provided much of the early foundation on which Disney built an empire.<ref name="NG" /> In film, the Cinderella [[motif (folkloristics)|motif]], the story of a poor girl finding love and success, has been repeated in movies such as ''[[Pretty Woman]]'', ''[[Ever After]]'', ''[[Maid in Manhattan]]'', and ''[[Ella Enchanted (film)|Ella Enchanted]]''.<ref name="Tnp">{{Harvnb|Tatar|2010}}</ref> Not only have the Grimms’ tales provided an empire for Disney to build, but oftentimes, in stories written by the Brothers Grimm, Disney’s villains are depicted as Jewish caricatures. The stepmother in Cinderella is the antagonist of the story and appears Jewish, with a big nose and dark features. Even more blatantly, Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty has devil horns, just as Christians would paint Jews as devils or demons in the Middle Ages. “Images began to portray Jews as hooknosed caricatures of evil” at this time.<ref>Lipton, Sara. “The Words That Killed Medieval Jews.” The New York Times. December 11, 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/the-words-that-killed-medieval-jews.html</ref> 


20th-century educators debated the value and influence of teaching stories that include brutality and violence, and some of the more gruesome details were sanitized.<ref name="Z(1988)15ff" /> Dégh writes that some educators, in the belief that children should be shielded from cruelty of any form, believe that stories with a happy ending are fine to teach, whereas those that are darker, particularly the legends, might pose more harm. On the other hand, some educators and psychologists believe that children easily discern the difference between what is a story and what is not and that the tales continue to have value for children.<ref name="D99ff">{{Harvnb|Dégh|1979|pp=99–101}}</ref> The publication of [[Bruno Bettelheim]]'s 1976 ''[[The Uses of Enchantment]]'' brought a new wave of interest in the stories as children's literature, with an emphasis on the "therapeutic value for children".<ref name="Tnp" /> More popular stories, such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Riding Hood", have become staples of modern childhood, presented in coloring books, puppet shows, and cartoons. Other stories have been considered too gruesome and have not made a popular transition.<ref name="D95ff" />

Regardless, the Grimms' stories continue to be popular around the world,<ref name="D99ff" /> although a recent study in England appears to suggest that parents consider the stories overly violent and inappropriate for young children.<ref>{{cite web |last=Copeland |first=Libby |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/why_i_don_t_want_to_read_fairy_tales_to_my_daughter_.html |title=Tales Out of Fashion? |work=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]] |date=29 February 2012 |access-date=28 March 2012}}</ref>

Nevertheless, children remain enamored of the Grimms' fairy tales with the brothers themselves embraced as the creators of the stories and even as part of the stories themselves. The film ''[[The Brothers Grimm (film)|The Brothers Grimm]]'' imagines them as [[con artists]] exploiting superstitious German peasants until they are asked to confront a genuine fairy-tale curse that calls them to finally be heroes. The movie ''[[Ever After]]'' shows the Grimms in their role as collectors of fairy tales, though they learn to their surprise that at least one of their stories (Cinderella) is true. ''[[Grimm (TV series)|Grimm]]'' follows a detective who discovers that he is a Grimm, the latest in a line of guardians who are sworn to keep the balance between humanity and mythological creatures. ''[[Ever After High]]'' imagines Grimm Brothers (here called Milton and Giles) as the [[headmaster|headmasters]] of the Ever After High [[boarding school]], where they train the children of the previous generation of fairy tales to follow in their parents' footsteps. In the ''[[The 10th Kingdom|10th Kingdom]]'' miniseries, the brothers are trapped for years in the fairy-tale world on the 9 Kingdoms, where they witnessed the events that they would record as stories upon finally making it back to the real world. The ''[[Sisters Grimm]]'' book series follows their descendants, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm, as they adapt to life in Ferryport Landing, a town in upstate New York populated by fairy-tale people. Separate from the previous series is the ''[[Land of Stories]]'' book series which also features the idea of "Sisters Grimm." In ''The Land of Stories'', the Grimm Brothers' female descendants are a self-described [[coven]] determined to track down and document creatures from the fairy-tale world that cross over to the real world. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were, in fact, chosen by [[Mother Goose]] and others to tell fairy tales so that they might give hope to the human race.<ref> {{cite book |last1=Colfer |first1=Chris |title=Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell |date=July 17, 2012 |publisher=Little Brown and Company |location=New York |pages=220 |edition=1}} </ref>

The university library at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin]] is housed in the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center ({{lang|de|Jakob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum}});<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ub.hu-berlin.de/locations/jacob-und-wilhelm-grimm-zentrum?set_language=en |title=Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum |publisher=[[Humboldt University of Berlin]] |access-date=20 December 2012 |archive-date=5 April 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110405005416/http://www.ub.hu-berlin.de/locations/jacob-und-wilhelm-grimm-zentrum?set_language=en |url-status=dead }}</ref> among its collections is a large portion of the Grimms' private library.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ub.hu-berlin.de/about-us/historical-collections/historical-and-special-collections-of-the-library/overview-of-the-historical-and-special-collections-of-the-library/grimm |title=The Grimm Library |publisher=[[Humboldt University of Berlin]] |access-date=20 December 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120104192821/http://www.ub.hu-berlin.de/about-us/historical-collections/historical-and-special-collections-of-the-library/overview-of-the-historical-and-special-collections-of-the-library/grimm |archive-date=4 January 2012 }}</ref>