As an avid bookworm, Germany’s Fairy Tale Route (or Deutsche Maerchenstrasse) has been on my to-do-list since I first arrived in Germany. Versions of the Grimm’s stories are known across the world, through numerous movies and adaptations. Who hasn’t heard of Rapunzel, Snow White, Red Riding Hood or Cinderella? I couldn’t wait to find out more about the lives of two brothers who set out to collect and publish German folk tales for children, and who ended up creating timeless classics enjoyed around the world. I expected to be enchanted by the landscape and entertained by the origins of the stories. It turned out the reality was quite different from what I had imagined. In this blog we’ll walk you through our itinerary, with links to key locations, and let you in on the surprising Grimm secrets we uncovered along the way.
Day 1: Hamelin - Following the Trail of the Pied Piper
Our journey began in the charming town of Hamelin, famously known for the tale of the Pied Piper. As you stroll through the well-preserved streets of this picturesque town, you can't help but feel a sense of wonder and curiosity. From the colourful Weser Renaissance architecture to the bustling market squares, every corner of Hamelin is steeped in history and legend.
Delving into the origins of the Pied Piper story uncovered surprising historical facts behind the legend. Did you know that the tale may have been based on actual events involving the mysterious disappearance of children in the 13th century? However, what I had considered to be the moral of the story - keep your promises - turns out to be the part that actually is the made-up ‘fairy tale’.
The first record of the event was a glass window (c. 1300) in the Market Church of Hameln. It showed children being led away by a piper, but it doesn’t mention any rats. Later, the Lueneburg manuscript (c 1440 – 50), stated: “In the year of 1284, on June 26, by a piper, clothed in many kinds of colours, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced, and lost at the place of execution.” And a 1384 entry in Hamelin’s town records it says “It is 100 years since our children left.” So the part about all the children being taken is true, but the rats were added by the Grimm brothers to create a reader-friendly ‘moral’ to the story.
There are several theories about what happened to the children. One explanation is ‘dance mania’, which apparently was rife through mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It has been described as individuals dancing “hysterically through the streets for hours, days, and sometimes even months, until they collapsed due to exhaustion or died from heart attack or stroke.”
Another, darker theory, is that the Pied Piper was actually a paedophile who crept into the town of Hamelin to abduct children during their sleep. It’s been suggested that perhaps the horrible nature of the children’s disappearance led town officials to cover it up, but they couldn't stop it from being passed down orally over generations until it became warped in the town’s collective memory.
There is also a possibility that Hamelin's children were lost during the Ostsiedlung, a time in the middle ages when huge numbers of Germans left their homes to colonise Eastern Europe. The Hameln Museum, says the recruiters who organised the migrations to the east wore colourful garments and played an instrument to attract the attention of possible settlers - which fits the character of the Pied Piper
Other theories are that the children were actually sent away by their parents, due to the extreme poverty in which they were living. Or that they were participants of a doomed ‘Children’s Crusade’ , and might have ended up in modern day Romania.
None of these scenarios sound particularly happy, and when you think about the story itself really is rather dark - so an odd one for a town to so strongly associate itself with. But it works - Hamelin attracts tourists, and is a fun place to visit. The sounds of the bells keep you dancing.
Day 2 (morning): Hämelschenburg Castle - Exploring the Realm of Frau Holle
So, from day one, I learnt that the Grimm brothers added some creative licence to the stories they collected. Understandable - they had two purposes, preserving German folk law, and to promote social good through the ‘moral’ of their children’s stories. I’m curious to see if there are any other surprises at our next stop: Hämelschenburg Castle.
As we drove through the German countryside I liked to imagine the Brothers Grimm travelling the same route on horse and cart, stopping at small villages and gathering stories at local inns, farms and markets. Perhaps Hämelschenburg is one of the places they stopped, because according to the Castle website, it was the inspiration for their story “Frau Holle”. Also known as "Mother Hulda" (or "Old Mother Frost") its a story I had never heard before, but it's apparently very common in German households. The kind hearted Frau Holle in the fairy tale is supposed to be based on Anna von Holle, the wife of the builder Heinrich von Klenke, who lived here in the 16th century.
The tale of Frau Holle, like many Grimm stories, involves magic, housework, and common female tropes: the evil stepmother, the ugly, lazy stepsister and the beautiful industrious and poorly treated girl in need of rescue. Interestingly, it is one of the few Grimm tales that doesn’t actually include a castle of any kind. A little more research reveals that Mother Hulda featured in German legend long before the Grimm brothers told her story, and well before this castle was even built. She was originally a pagan Germanic weather goddess who watched over children and domestic life. In fact, so strong was her hold in the German culture that in the year 1008 the catholic church officially declared her a demon and anyone who believed in her had to perform penance for a year. But her legend survived, and It is still a common expression in Hesse, to say "Hulda is making her bed" when it is snowing, that is, she shakes her bed and out falls snow from heaven.
So perhaps the castle’s advertising may have taken a few liberties when they linked its occupants to the Grimm Brothers. Regardless, the lake is beautiful. Unfortunately the castle was under construction when we visited, so we couldn’t enter or go to the museum - but you could try your luck between late April through October.
Day 2 (afternoon): Lowenburg Castle -
Rapunzel’s Tower??
On our way to the next official Grimm stop, Kassel, we took a detour to see the stunning Schloss Lowenburg. Set in the magnificent Bergpark Wilhelmshohe, Lowenburg looks like a mediaeval ruin, and seems to be the perfect inspiration for Grimm Brothers’ tales such as Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty.
But actually the castle wasn’t built until after the stories were written.
Landgrave Wilhelm IX had the Löwenburg built from 1793 to 1801 based on a model of a knight's castle. It’s supposed to show that his principality has ruled the country since 1567 so its equipped with everything that a castle from the Middle Ages was thought to have including castle tower, tournament area and armoury. In fact, it has many, many towers.
It turns out locking away women in towers was actually as common as the Grimm Brothers’ made it out to be. The main reasons for confinement in a mediaeval tower were debt, political dissension, or the prisoners were noblemen kidnapped for ransom. Women were also often held captive for loving the wrong person. It’s interesting to think that by the 1700s the Grimm Brothers reversed this theme in their stories, allowing love to set their princesses free.
While it might be just a replica, it's still a 200 year old replica, and it’s an amazing place to walk around. The surrounding park was beautiful, even when we visited in early April, and we wished we had timed it better so that we could do the guided tour of the interior. The inside of Löwenburg is designed to look like a princely pleasure palace, although actually Wilhelm never lived there. It has a mediaeval staging, valuable collection items and costumed servants, intended just to impress its guests. When you visit make sure to check the website for opening times and to book your ticket in advance. Tours begin on the hour and don’t operate consistently, so it pays to do your research first if you want to take a look inside.
All up, this is a stunning castle. So even though Löwenburg is not a truly authentic Grimm Brothers’ location, we recommend you add it to your itinerary anyway.
Day 3: Kassel - City of Influence
On Days 3 & 4 we explored the city of Kassel, and immersed ourselves in the world of Jacob and Wilhelm in the town that had the biggest influence on their careers. It was here that we uncovered our biggest surprises, and it completely changed the way I thought about the Brothers Grimm. They first moved to Kassel in 1798 to attend the Friedrichsgymnasium (high school) which was arranged and paid for by their aunt, as by then their father had passed away and the family was supported by relatives. It was here they developed their interest in history and began studying mediaeval German literature. Wilhelm Grimm wrote in his autobiography, "the ardour with which we studied Old German helped us overcome the spiritual depression of those days."
The story of their lives is lovingly told in the interactive museum Grimmwelt (or Gimm World). We couldn’t film inside, but recommend a visit. It’s open nearly every day and has interactive exhibits for all ages. Make sure you walk up to the roof where you’ll get a fabulous view of the city, then leave time to walk through the beautiful State Park.
First created over 300 years ago as a baroque garden, the Staatspark Karlsaue was later redesigned into an English landscape garden. It includes sites such as the ‘breakfast pavilion’ - the last remnant of the gardens of Bellevue Palace, which was demolished after the Second World War. Unfortunately the pavilion is looking a little unloved today, and has been unofficially redecorated by local graffiti artists, but it does offer a nice view and a walkway to the modern art museum.
Other points of interest include The New Gallery, which holds a collection of German Expressionists and exhibits modern artists. There’s also the Orangerie: a baroque castle built in 1703, damaged in World War II, and later repaired in 1955. It has now been transformed into an astronomy with a planetarium and an astronomical garden added. As a New Zealander, I was intrigued by a flock of sheep who were being herded onto the grounds of the Orangerie. It seemed a noble place for the humble sheep to graze, but as everyone else was going about their daily business, it seems it was just us kiwis who found the sheep photo-worthy.
Day 4: Kassel’s Fairy Tale Quarter: Unveiling the Truth Behind the Legend of the Brothers Grimm
All in all we found Kassel was a great city to visit and we enjoyed spending a couple of days here. The highlight for me was visiting “The Fairy Tale Quarter”, in the suburb of Niederzwehren, where I learnt the true force behind the Grimm fairy tales - women. In particular, Dorothea Viehmann is recognised as contributing a major portion of the Brother’s content.
The Fairy Tale Quarters is exactly as described: streets filled with beautiful half-timbered homes divided by small streams, picturesque and exactly the sort of place you’d imagine a fairy tale to begin. All these historical buildings are modern day homes, and the neighbourhood goes about its daily lives as the tourists wander around. The community celebrates its connections to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and there is information posted around the streets. But it’s not the brothers that you will learn about here. All the signs point us to the birthplace of Dorothea Viehmann.
Having never heard of Dorothea, I was surprised to find she is the voice behind at least 21 of their fairy tales. Like many people, I thought the Grimm brothers had travelled around Germany collecting stories from the village peasants they stopped to talk with along the way. Wrong - turns out they actually just wrote down the stories of a small group of middle-class women who lived in their neighbourhood.
In the first English translation, Dorothea is called a peasant and given the name Gammer Gretel, but actually she was the French wife of a middle-class tailor. ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ was told by Jeannette and Marie Hassenpflug, also young middle-class French women who met often in the local storytelling circle. And the biggest contributor to the brothers’ collection was the girl who had grown up next door to them. Her name was Henriette Wild, and she was just nineteen when she began to share her stories. She was the source of ‘Rumpelstiltskin,’ ‘Six Swans,’ ‘The Frog King,’ ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker,’ and maybe up to almost one quarter of the Grimm brothers’ first collection of fairy tales. She also, in the end, married one of the brothers.
Day 5: Steinau an der Strasse - Back to the Roots of the Brothers Grimm
So everything I have learnt about the Grimm brothers so far has been a bit of a surprise, but there is still one more stop on our tour - the childhood home of the brothers and their family. I’m interested to find out what more we’ll learn there. Walking in their footsteps, we will get to explore the quaint cobblestone lanes and half-timbered houses of their childhood.
While born in Hanau, Steinau an der strasse is the Town where the Brothers Grimm grew up. Already an established town when they arrived, In fact, archaeological evidence shows there was a small settlement in this area in the 8th century. The first church was built in the 9th century. By the mid-13th century, St. Catherine's Church was big enough to accommodate burials on its grounds. So on 4 July 1290, the Emperor awarded Steinau the status of “town” which meant it was now permitted it to hold a weekly market.
The old Frankfurt-Leipzig trade route once ran where the Brüder-Grimm-Straße now runs through Steinau. Traders and travellers passed through the town, harnessing their wagons to relax in the numerous inns. No inns were open on the day we stopped in (a Sunday), but we were able to have a coffee at one of the little cafes. We loved walking through the quiet cobblestone lanes, taking in the intricate designs of half-timbered structures, the oldest of which was built around 1520. It truly is amazing they are still standing - the workmanship seems a little wonky, but was obviously hardy enough to stand the test of time.
The Grimm brothers were six and five years old when they moved to Steinau in 1791 when their father Philipp was transferred here. The family moved into the Amtshaus, a stately Renaissance building with a stone base and an upper floor, which is decorated with a rich decorated upper floor in the half-timbered style. The Brothers spent a happy five years in this house with their brothers and sisters.
Today the building is the Museum Brothers Grimm-Haus Steinau. Unfortunately it was closed on the day we visited, so we learnt not to trust Google Map information. Off-season hours are limited and sometimes different than advertised - even you want to be 100% sure, you might want to call in advance.
In 1796, when Phillip died and his widow and her children had to move into smaller houses, which are still standing in the village today. Their father's death (when Jacob was eleven and Wilhelm was ten) caused great poverty for the family. They gave up their servants and large house, and became dependent on financial support from their extended family. Jacob was the eldest living son, so at age 11 was forced to quickly assume adult responsibilities, which he shared with Wilhelm. The two brothers followed the advice of their grandfather, who taught them to be industrious and ambitious.
The whole town is now dedicated to the work they eventually produced - with paintings and statues dedicated to their fairy tales. But best of all was the museum in Steinau Castle, where I learnt more about the work of the Grimm Brothers.
Steinau Castle is the best-preserved early Renaissance castle complex in Hesse. One of the few 16th century castle complexes that’s almost entirely preserved in its original form, it's a five-sided complex with a 41 m high keep surrounded by a dry moat and wall. . Redesigned by the Counts of Hanau between 1528 and 1555 into a residence, the interior still incorporates parts of the original mediaeval castle. Inside is a museum, which begins with a history of the castle, showing some original castle walls.
There is also an extensive exhibit of the lives of the Grimm brothers and their family. Turns out the brothers weren’t the only successful ones, and their fairy tales are not the only work they did that has had an impact on the world.
While the fairy tales became their most well known legacy, their true passion was actually their work on a German Dictionary, which they never got to finish. Their epic goal was to record the origin and use of every German word in the entire New High German language. The project also had a political side to it. It was intended to linguistically unify the German Reich through a common use of words. They started their work in 1838, but they were very detailed in their work and took their time about it. It was nearly twenty years before the first volumes were finally published. Wilhelm was still working on entries for the letter D when he died in 1859. Jacob managed to complete the letter E and was working on the word Frucht (fruit) when he died in 1863.
After they died their supporters continued their work, but it took another 98 years for the book to be completed. The final volume was published in 1961, with the final entry for Z being Zyypressenzweig (cypress branch). But by then, the original 19th-century entries by the Brothers Grimm were already so outdated that they had to be completely revised, so editing continued. Finally, in 2016, a hundred and seventy-eight years after it was started, the book was finished.
The final book is, of course, enormous, and weighs 84 kilograms (185 pounds). Fortunately, if you’re really interested, you can now get it in digital form. It is a monumental work of the German language that made it into the Guinness World Records. Meanwhile Handwritten copies of their fairy tales, which they called "Children's and Household Tales" are registered by UNESCO as a world documentary heritage item. Unesco calls it (next to the Luther Bible) the most well-known and most widely distributed book worldwide of German cultural history.
Reflecting on our Journey
All in all, regardless of some of the myths we’ve come to believe about the Grimm Brothers, you can’t deny Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are among the most important intellectual personalities in German and European cultural history. As our journey along the Fairy Tale Route in Germany came to a close, I reflected on how much I enjoyed it despite having all my expectations dashed. I was enchanted by the tranquil beauty of the German countryside, the majesty of castles and the charm of the cobblestone streets and quaint townships. Each stop along the way offered a glimpse into the myths behind modern personas of my imagination. I really enjoyed exposing the fact behind the fantasy because the truth was even more interesting! It’s a trip I can tell many stories about, to help both fuel and dispel the legends.
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