Wilhelm's character was a complete contrast to that of his brother. As a boy, growing up he suffered a long and severe illness which left him weak the rest of his life.

He had a less comprehensive and energetic mind than his brother, and he had less of the spirit of investigation, preferring to confine himself to some limited and definitely constrained field of work.

He utilized everything that bore directly on his own studies and ignored the rest. These studies were almost always of a literary nature.

Wilhelm took great delight in music and he had a remarkable gift of story-telling. He is described as “an uncommonly animated, jovial fellow.” He was, accordingly, much sought in society, which he frequented much more than his brother.


With the goal of researching scholarly treatises on folk tales, they established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. The rise of Romanticism in 19th-century Europe revived interest in traditional folk stories. Between 1812 and 1857 their first collection was revised and republished many times, growing from 86 stories to more than 200.  


The popularity of the Grimms' collected folk tales has endured well. The tales are available in more than 100 translations and have been adapted by renowned filmmakers, including Lotte Reiniger and Walt Disney, with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the mid-20th century, the tales were used as propaganda by Nazi Germany; later in the 20th century, psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim reaffirmed the value of the work in spite of the cruelty and violence in original versions of some of the tales, which were eventually sanitized by the Grimms themselves.

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