Jacob Grimm

Born in Hanau in 1785, Jacob Grimm grew up in what is now Germany and studied law at the University of Marburg. Although many readers know him through the fairy tales gathered with his younger brother Wilhelm, his interests reached far beyond storytelling.

With Wilhelm, he collected and edited Children's and Household Tales, the book that made the Brothers Grimm famous and preserved stories such as "Cinderella" and "Hansel and Gretel" for later generations. Their work helped spark lasting interest in folklore as something worth recording and studying, not just retelling.

Jacob Grimm was also an important linguist and philologist. He is especially remembered for Grimm's law, a major insight into how sounds changed across related languages, and for his part in the vast Deutsches Wörterbuch, a historical dictionary of German. He died in Berlin in 1863, leaving behind a legacy that bridges scholarship and the imagination.