42 Facts About Jacob Grimm

Jacob Grimm is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of the monumental Deutsches Worterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie, and the editor of Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Jacob Grimm was the older brother of Wilhelm Grimm; together, they were the literary duo known as the Brothers Grimm.

Jacob Grimm's father, Philipp Grimm, was a lawyer who died while Jacob was a child, and his mother Dorothea was left with a very small income.

Jacob Grimm's sister was lady of the chamber to the Landgravine of Hesse, and she helped to support and educate the family.

Jacob Grimm's brother joined him at Marburg a year later, having just recovered from a severe illness, and likewise began the study of law.

Jacob Grimm became inspired by the lectures of Friedrich Carl von Savigny, a noted expert of Roman law; Wilhelm Grimm, in the preface to the Deutsche Grammatik, credits Savigny with giving the brothers an awareness of science.

Jacob Grimm complained that he had to exchange his stylish Paris suit for a stiff uniform and pigtail, but the role gave him spare time for the pursuit of his studies.

Jacob Grimm was appointed an auditor to the state council, while retaining his superintendent post.

Jacob Grimm's salary rose to 4000 francs and his official duties were nominal.

In 1813, after the expulsion of Bonaparte and the reinstatement of an elector, Jacob Grimm was appointed Secretary of Legation accompanying the Hessian minister to the headquarters of the allied army.

Meanwhile, Wilhelm had obtained a job at the Kassel library, and Jacob Grimm was made second librarian under Volkel in 1816.

Consequently, they moved the following year to the University of Gottingen, where Jacob Grimm was appointed professor and librarian, and Wilhelm under-librarian.

Jacob Grimm lectured on legal antiquities, historical grammar, literary history, and diplomatics, explained Old German poems, and commented on the Germania of Tacitus.

Jacob Grimm joined other academics, known as the Gottingen Seven, who signed a protest against the King of Hanover's abrogation of the liberal constitution which had been established some years before.

Jacob Grimm returned to Kassel with his brother, who had signed the protest.

Jacob Grimm was not under any obligation to lecture, and seldom did so; he spent his time working with his brother on their dictionary project.

Jacob Grimm described his impressions of Italian and Scandinavian travel, interspersing more general observations with linguistic details.

Jacob Grimm was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1857.

Jacob Grimm died in Berlin at the age of 78, working until the very end of his life.

Jacob Grimm describes his own work at the end of his autobiography:.

Jacob Grimm collected scattered words and allusions from classical literature and tried to determine the relationship between the German language and those of the Getae, Thracians, Scythians, and other nations whose languages were known only through Greek and Latin authors.

Jacob Grimm's results were later greatly modified by a wider range of available comparison and improved methods of investigation.

Jacob Grimm drew on the work of past generations, from the humanists onwards, consulting an enormous collection of materials in the form of text editions, dictionaries, and grammars, mostly uncritical and unreliable.

Jacob Grimm himself did not initially intend to include all the languages in his Grammar, but he soon found that Old High German postulated Gothic, and that the later stages of German could not be understood without the help of other West Germanic varieties including English, and that the literature of Scandinavia could not be ignored.

Jacob Grimm had concluded that all philology must be based on rigorous adherence to the laws of sound change, and he subsequently never deviated from this principle.

Jacob Grimm's advances have been attributed mainly to the influence of his contemporary Rasmus Christian Rask.

Jacob Grimm then began a third edition, of which only one part, comprising the vowels, appeared in 1840, his time being afterwards taken up mainly by the dictionary.

Jacob Grimm's law, known as the "Rask-Jacob Grimm Rule" or the First Germanic Sound Shift, was the first law in linguistics concerning a non-trivial sound change.

The idea that Jacob Grimm wished to deprive Rask of his claims to priority is based on the fact that he does not expressly mention Rask's results in his second edition, but it was always his plan to refrain from all controversy or reference to the works of others.

The dictionary, as far as it was worked on by Jacob Grimm himself, has been described as a collection of disconnected antiquarian essays of high value.

The first work Jacob Grimm published, Uber den altdeutschen Meistergesang, was of a purely literary character.

Yet even in this essay Jacob Grimm showed that Minnesang and Meistergesang were really one form of poetry, of which they merely represented different stages of development, and announced his important discovery of the invariable division of the Lied into three strophic parts.

Jacob Grimm's text-editions were mostly prepared in conjunction with his brother.

However, Jacob Grimm had little taste for text editing, and, as he himself confessed, working on a critical text gave him little pleasure.

Jacob Grimm therefore left this department to others, especially Lachmann, who soon turned his brilliant critical genius, trained in the severe school of classical philology, to Old and Middle High German poetry and metre.

Jacob Grimm's work tied in strongly with his views on Germany and its culture.

Jacob Grimm wished for a united Germany, and, like his brother, supported the Liberal movement for a constitutional monarchy and civil liberties, as demonstrated by their involvement in the Gottingen Seven protest.

Jacob Grimm was selected for the office largely because of his part in the University of Gottingen's refusal to swear to the king of Hanover.

Jacob Grimm soon became disillusioned with the National Assembly and asked to be released from his duties to return to his studies.

Jacob Grimm was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1863.

Jacob Grimm died on 20 September 1863, in Berlin, Germany from natural causes, at the age of 78.

Jacob Grimm's life is best studied in his own Selbstbiographie, in vol.