Germany

GRIMMWELT (Grimm World)

A Byrd

Nov 26, 2024 — 5 min read

After leaving Saxony, we spent three nights in Helsa, near the city of Kassel. This was another stay that was longer than our original plan, due to our other AirBnb booking for that week being inexplicably cancelled by the host a few days beforehand!

Luckily we were able to add two nights to our Helsa stay (previously just intended as a single-night, break-up-the-drive stop). This was in an apartment at the top of a lovely old house, with a precarious ladder leading up to a mezzanine bedroom and this adorable view from the kitchen window...

On Wednesday, our first full day in Helsa, we did absolutely nothing. Well, we didn't leave the apartment, at any rate! We opted for a "lazy" day, watching little snowflakes swirling down outside while we caught up on work, blogging and life admin. There was only one thing we (okay, I) really wanted to do in Kassel and that's what did on Thursday... GRIMMWELT!

GRIMMWELT is a museum dedicated to the lives and work of the Brothers Grimm, who lived in Kassel for about 30 years. Obviously this was of particular interest to me for professional reasons, and I learnt so much! The breadth and depth of Jacob and Wilhelm's interests and expertise, as well as the extent of their correspondence (20000 letters to over 1400 correspondents!), was just incredible.

We had already booked this trip before I discovered fairytale sightseeing is a thing in Germany. Luckily our route happened to cross it and thus we could fit in some Grimm sightseeing!

I was tickled pink to see that the museum's cafe was named after an obscure Grimm character I've used in my upcoming book 2. 😁

A large section of the museum was devoted to the Grimms' work on the German Dictionary, a truly mammoth project that took 120+ years to complete (other people continued this work for decades after the brothers died), as well as their many other published works. I didn't know much about their work outside of fairytales, so this was super interesting!

When you speak into this horn, it insults you in old German!

One in a series of paper dioramas showing the creation of the German Dictionary.

I also learnt about a fascinating court case in which the Grimms challenged someone who used, verbatim, 60+ of their stories in a rival fairytale collection. I'm not sure if it was heartening or disheartening to learn that even the Brothers Grimm had to stand up for the value of well-written, thoughtfully produced children's literature. It seemed rather topical given recent events and discussions in the kidlit world sparked by a certain celebrity chef!

This is a translation of one of the many letters sent back and forth during the course of the court case.

There was also a lot of information about the Grimms' family, home and working lives, even down to their childhood drawings, cards they gave their mother, furniture and items from their house, etc! We all particularly enjoyed the recording of a puppet show version of a comedic play from 1850 called One Must Marry, a not-so-subtle jab at the Brothers Grimm and, we have to say, still extremely hilarious now!

J enjoyed the puppet show multiple times!

L-R: Jacob, Wilhelm and Dorothea (whom Wilhelm married in real life). In this scene, Jacob has drawn the short straw and has to marry Dorothea, but he doesn't know how to propose so Wilhelm is demonstrating how to do it (and thus gets engaged). 😆

Something else really interesting was the information about their brother Ludwig. He was a talented artist, and there were a couple of scrolls displayed — about 10cm high but many metres long — on which he had drawn amusing comic-style illustrations. This was before comics were a thing! One was about the life of a pig and the other documented a trip he took with his wife and daughter.

This drawing by Ludwig Grimm shows Wilhelm and Dorothea's three children.

And, of course, part of the museum was devoted to fairytales. This was the section that was most fun for the boys! For me, seeing Jacob and Wilhelm's personal first- and second-edition copies of Children's and Household Tales, complete with their handwritten notes in the margins, was absolutely surreal.