Germany

Brüder Grimm Haus

A Byrd

— 4 min read
Brüder Grimm Haus

On Friday, we checked out of our AirBnb in Helsa and headed south towards the home of the friends we'd be staying with for the weekend.

On the way, we stopped at Brüder Grimm Haus (Brothers Grimm House) in Steinau for a second consecutive days of Grimm sightseeing! The museum is in a house the Grimm family actually lived in for part of Jacob and Wilhelm's childhood.

Brüder Grimm Straße (Brothers Grimm Street) in the town of Steinau.
Wilhelm and Jacob's family moved into this house when they were five and six years old.

The lower level of the house was all about the brothers' lives and work, including on the German Dictionary.

There was a kitchen set up similar to how it would have been in their day, and a room dedicated to their other family members — including an interactive enlarged version of the fabulous holiday-documenting scroll drawn by their brother Ludwig that I mentioned in my previous post.

One rather significant downside was that all the museum signage was only in German, but with Google Translate I was able to read quite a lot of it!

The books lined up in the centre of this photo are the volumes that collectively make up the German Dictionary. Each book covers only a small section of the alphabet. No wonder this project took 120+ years!
The screen on the lower right here shows the enlarged scroll. You could roll the rollers on either side of it to scan along the entire scroll.

The upper level of the house was dedicated to fairytales! There were lots of dioramas, translations of the collection in various languages, information about plays and operas based on fairytales, a room displaying Snow White's various incarnations as a toy or marketing prop etc, and more.

A room full of fairytale dioramas.
Hansel and Gretel diorama.
The (German) title of each fairytale was hidden behind a flap, making it possible to spending time guessing first.
I was amused by the extra characters who'd made themselves part of this diorama of The Goose Girl!
Fairytale books in various languages.
A few of the many Snow White toys and figurines that have been made over the years.
A Hansel and Gretel plate. And look — she's crying!
More Hansel and Gretel art.
This computer had a great animated fairytale game.
How many different fairytales can you identify in this artwork?

I really enjoyed visiting Brüder Grimm Haus (which was very relaxing as we were the only visitors there all afternoon!), but if I had to choose between it or GRIMMWELT in Kassel, I'd pick the latter. I learnt more there and its signage included English! But it was amazing to be able to walk around inside a house where the Brothers Grimm actually lived.

I'm also looking forward to reading the book I purchased from this museum, which has a mix of fairytale tourist route information, Brothers Grimm stories and scholarly commentary. A lovely addition to the (extremely restrained) collection of trip souvenirs!

When we left, it was snowing!

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