The Brothers Grimm: The German Fairy Tale Route

Jacob Grimm was born here on 4 January 1785, Wilhelm on 24 February 1786. The family lived in the planned New Town, built for Reformed refugees from France and the Netherlands, and the boys spent their earliest childhood there. Wilhelm later remembered walking with Jacob across the New Town market to a French-language teacher near the church. Hanau still counts the brothers among its famous sons: the men who collected many German fairy tales and began a German dictionary. The route starts at the market square.

Location precision: Sources place the family in the New Town and its market, not at an exact address; the pin marks the market square.

In January 1791 the family moved to Steinau, where their father had been appointed district magistrate (Amtmann). The town lay on the Via Regia, the road linking Frankfurt and Leipzig. Five years later, on 10 January 1796, he died of pneumonia at forty-four, and the family had to leave the official residence within weeks. Today the Amtshaus is the Brüder-Grimm-Haus, and the town's sights include a fairy-tale fountain, the Märchenbrunnen.

Visitor guidance: The Brüder-Grimm-Haus is on Brüder-Grimm-Straße; check opening times before visiting.

At Marburg University the brothers found a small school of about 200 students. Their poverty kept them from student activities and social life, so they studied hard. Through their law professor Savigny and his circle, which included Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, they met the ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder and turned to medieval German literature.

Location precision: Sources name the university, not a single building; the pin marks the university district.

Jacob became court librarian in 1808, and Wilhelm joined him as a librarian in Kassel. The posts paid little but left time for research. At Brentano's request the brothers had begun collecting folk tales in 1807, and in 1812 they published their first volume of 86 tales, the Kinder- und Hausmärchen.

Location precision: The librarians' workplaces are not identified in the sources; the pin marks Schöne Aussicht in Kassel.

This ruined hill castle in the Reinhardswald forest is nicknamed Sleeping Beauty Castle after the Grimm tale. In the tale, "a large hedge of thorns soon grew round the palace." The real castle began as a hunting lodge built by Landgrave William I in 1490. From 1959 the ruins were converted into a hotel with restaurant and café, which opened in 1960.

Location precision: The Grimm tale names no real castle; Sababurg is only the traditional Sleeping Beauty Castle.

In 1830 the brothers moved to Göttingen: Jacob as professor and head librarian, Wilhelm as professor. In 1837 they lost their posts after joining the Göttingen Seven in protest against the king's demand for oaths. Without income, they began a lifelong project, the German Dictionary, whose first volume appeared only in 1854.

Location precision: The brothers worked across the university; the pin marks the university's main site.

The town is famous for the folk tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, a medieval story of a tragedy that befell the town in the 13th century. The version written by the Brothers Grimm made it popular throughout the world. Every Sunday in summer, actors perform the tale in the town centre.

Location precision: The tale concerns the town as a whole; the pin marks the Old Town centre.

Visitor guidance: Performances run on summer Sundays in the town centre.

In the tale a donkey, dog, cat and rooster, all too old for their masters, set out for Bremen, known for its freedom, to become musicians. They never arrive: they scare off robbers and are "so pleased with their quarters" that they stay. The Grimms first printed it in 1819, from storyteller Dorothea Viehmann. Gerhard Marcks's bronze of the four animals has stood at the town hall's west portal since 1953.

Visitor guidance: The statue stands by the west side of the town hall on the market square.