Grimm's Fairytales Are Darker Than You Remember - The Story of The Brothers Grimm

Rapunzel Sleeping Beauty Snow White Hansel and grle it'd be hard pressed to find an adult or a child who isn't familiar with at least one of these Fairy Tales stories like these have taught generations of children lessons on bravery and kindness they've shaped the work of authors becoming a vessel for preserving folklore and national identity and yes even become the basis for much of Disney's intellectual property but as familiar with these classic fairy tales as you may be chances are you haven't heard their much darker original versions as recorded by the brothers Grim since you're

watching this I'd wager your interested in captivating stories if that is indeed the case then June's Journey could be right up your street June's journey is a visually striking hidden object game set in the 1920s wherein your tasked with finding Clues and completing puzzles on your quest to solve the murder of jun's sister and brother-in-law that's not all however as there are also many other Mysteries to uncover along the way furthermore you'll also get to customize your island with a wide selection of items and fix up your mansion June's journey is free to play and

is a great way to while away a few moments or dive into for a longer gaming session so if you'd like to join the millions of others already enjoying June's Journey you can download the app by scanning the QR code on screen or by clicking on the link in the description box below today the Grim Brothers have almost become a folk tale themselves they've even inspired their own movie in television series in one adaptation the brothers played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger run a foul of a fairy tale curse while working as con artists

in 19th century Germany in another the Grim fairy tales are true stories recorded by the brothers to help their descendants defeat Supernatural entities the most commonly held belief about the brothers Grim was that they spent their lives traveling throughout Europe to collect and record these Tales but even that account of the brothers isn't really accurate so who were the brothers Grim they weren't adventurers or demon Hunters they weren't even really authors they were surprisingly academic Librarians ycob and willhelm Grim were born in 1785 and 1786 and Hano Germany they spent their childhood in the countryside

town of stau where their family enjoyed prosperity and prominence the brothers were privately educated by tutors at the family's large home until their father died unexpectedly in 1796 the burden of providing for their mother and their siblings drew the two Elder Brothers together becoming Inseparable for most of their lives ycob and Wilhelm studied law at the University of MarBorg but while there they developed an interest in philology the study of language in oral and written historical sources both brothers eventually became Librarians at the Hessian State library in castle at their peer urging the brothers began

collecting German folk tales and poetry this work was of personal interest to Jacob and Wilhelm who were seeking data on the German language for their linguistics studies but it also held a political interest Germany was divided into 30 States at the time each with its own ruler and laws the brothers felt this created a disjointed Germany and a decentralized national identity but they also had no interest in a Germany United under a foreign Emperor instead the brothers desired a strong shared German national identity to stand up against outside forces they believed that one way they

could help create that national identity was through folklore in 1812 the brothers published their first volume of 86 folk tales called Kinder on house Mission or children's and household Tales the title of the book was the brother's way of warning people that not every story contained within the book was aimed at children many were indeed for the adults or household the book was a success and the two brothers spent the rest of their lives continually adding Tales even when their political leanings left them unemployed and dependent on Friends by the time Jacob died in 1859

their collection was in its seventh edition and had grown to over 200 stories and included illustrations as I said there is a common belief that the two brothers traversed across Germany and in some cases all of Europe to collect their fairy tales for their collection but the truth is the Grims collected their stories mostly from friends and Casual acquaintances within their own Social Circles in fact many of them were told by a girl who lived next door and would eventually become wilhelm's wife her name was henriet dorthia wild but her friends called her dorin when

she was a teen dorin began telling stories to her neighbors her motivations were twofold she wanted to help entertain the young Grims who had by then lost both of their parents and she wanted to keep the attention of their older brother who seemed especially interested in the tales she told by Fire Light later Wilhelm would track Doran to her sister's house and nous to hear more of her stories and in 1825 he married her it's believed that dchen was the brother's source for much of their 1812 collection including Rumple stilt skin six swans The Frog

King The Elves and the shoe maker and the singing bone in all dorin told Wilhelm Grim about a quarter of all the stories that appeared in him his book and it's believed that much of the collection was gathered this way the brothers would simply invite people mainly women to tell them stories at Social Gatherings yob and willhelm then edited the tales adding dialogue and details that fit the linguistic aesthetic they hoped to achieve it's likely that as the brothers became more widely known and respected the sources for their stories became more varied but it's primarily

Dutch and we have to thank for their enduring Legacy regardless of where the Grims collected their Tales their Liv's work cemented these stories place in culture and history unfortunately not every chapter of that history is admirable when Adolf Hitler's Nazi party came to power in Germany they too strove to shape German nationalism though in a detestable way the nais used many of Grim's Tales as propaganda to promote their anti-semitic beliefs figures like Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella were used as symbols of arient Purity whilst villains like the big bad wolf were used to portray

those who they felt threatened Germany mainly Jewish people there were plenty of anti-Semitic tropes ripe for Nazi usage and Grim's Tales such as witches with st stereotypical hooked noses and cannibalistic Tendencies often falsely attributed to Jewish populations throughout much of History some Grims stories read like Nazi propaganda long before Hitler's editors and illustrators got a hold of them in the story The Jew and the brambles the protagonist tortures a Jewish Man by forcing him to dance in a Thicket of thorns and hurling insults like dirty dog the torment only stops when the Jewish man offers

up his own money and later a judge decides a Jewish person would never voluntarily give away money the man is named a thief and is hanged the effectiveness of using classic grim tales to propagandize German children was so great that many schools in Allied countries banned the fairy tales following World War II today the stories have been reimagined in New contexts that distance the classic characters from their sorted past but Nazi propaganda isn't the only skeleton in the Grims proverbial Closet in fact many of the original fairy tales were so dark it's hard to imagine

reading them to a Child Cinderella is perhaps the most famous fairy tale in history not just the brothers Grim version the Tal's Origins can be traced back to a Chinese story from the 9th century called yen in it a beautiful and bright child was raised by a stepmother who was jealous of Yen's Beauty for her own daughter was not pretty when the evil stepmother discovered Yen had made friends with a fish she captured the creature and cooked it for dinner in her grief Yen collected the bones of her friend which a wise man told her

were filled with a powerful spirit that could grant wishes when she was in need after her stepmother forbade her from attending the Spring Festival where young women often meet their future husbands Yen's Fishbones granted her a beautiful dress and Golden Slippers the girl attracted much attention at the festival but was forced to flee when her steps sister noticed her losing one precious slipper along the way the King was determined to find the owner of the strange tiny shoe and announced it would be placed in a Pavilion where the woman to whom it belonged could claim

it y Shen was desperate to retrieve the slipper to restore the Fishbones magic powers and when she sneaked into the Pavilion in the middle of the night the King was so taken by her beauty that he married her her evil stepmother and sister were left to live in a cave where they were eventually crushed to death by Falling Stones nearly every culture has its own version of Yen but our modern version is believed to be the work of French author Charles perau in 1697 who reimagined the heroine as SRE and added in a pumpkin a

fairy godmother and glass rather than Golden Slippers this is the version We remain most familiar with a stepmother with two daughters of her own who abuses Cinderella her terribly her fairy godmother transforms a pumpkin into a carriage gives her a shimmering gold and silver dress and a pair of glass slippers and sent her on her way to a ball where Cinderella and the prince fall in love left with only a single glass slipper as the sole clue to his new Love's identity the prince s about trying the shoe on the foot of every Maiden in

the realm eventually finding Cinderella ever the soul of kindness and Grace Cinderella forgives her Wicked stepsisters and brings them to the palace yakob and Wilhelm Grim called their version of the classic story Ashen although Grim's version shared much in common with perols it was noticeably darker in this telling as Cinderella's mother lies dying she tells her daughter to plant a tree on her grave she promises that when Cinderella wants something she should shake the tree and her mother will help her after his wife's death Cinderella's father remarries a woman with two arrogant evil daughters the

stepmother forces poor Cinderella to sleep in the ashes of the kitchen Hearth wear all the gray dresses and do the bidding of her two stepsisters when the king announces a three-day Bowl where the prince would choose a wife the step sisters forced Cinderella to help them prepare before leaving her to sort a basin of lentils Cinderella quickly completes her chore with the help of a few friendly pigeons then climbs to the top of the Pigeon Roost to watch the ball from afar when the step sisters learn that Cinderella has spent most of the evening watching

the prince dance with eligible maidens they tear down the Pigeon Roost and fury on the second night of the ball Cinderella's family leave her to sort out a sack full of seeds threatening her that she will go without food if she makes a single mistake again Cinderella completes her task with the help of the pigeons who urge her to go to the tree at her mother's grave and ask for help Cinderella shakes the tree and asks for nice clothes for the ball the tree drops a silver dress pearls and silver slippers and a carriage appears

at her door she goes to the ball and dances with the prince but must leave before midnight on the third night of the ball Cinderella once again asks the tree for help receiving an even more Splendid gown and Golden Slippers this time the prince sought to stop her from running away and cover the stairway with hot sticky pitch when she flees at midnight one of her gold slippers becomes stuck in the pitch and the prince decides he will find Cinderella by having every Maiden in the Kingdom try on the Golden Slipper promising to marry the

woman whose foot fits inside the dainty shoe when Cinderella's stepmother hears of the prince's plan she tells her two daughters to do whatever they must to make the slipper fit when the first stepsister takes the slipper to her bedroom to try it on she finds only the front of her foot will fit the sister slices off her heel and shows the prince who agrees to marry her as the pair walk to his Carriage the pigeons call out to the prince who sees blood streaming from his wouldbe bride's shoe and realizes the deception the second stepsister

then tries the trick for herself slicing off her toes so her foot will fit in the tiny slipper but again the pigeons tell the prince of the deceit finally the prince insists that Cinderella be called from the kitchen to try the slipper which fits perfectly the couple rides away to Wed leaving the crippled sisters and Furious stepmother behind the brothers Grim updated their Ashen putle several times as they continued to publish new versions of the colle ction of fairy tales but Cinderella's Story only got darker in their final version The Brothers make the father a

prominent character well aware of the abuse that his daughter suffers but unwilling to stop it when the prince asks if any more daughters are in the house the father says there is only a deformed little Cinderella from my first wife but she cannot possibly be the bride perhaps a more satisf update to the tale is the punishment of the evil stepsisters when the two attend Cinderella and the prince's wedding the pigeons Peck out their eyes leaving them blind in retaliation for their wickedness and lies the story of Cinderella has been told and retold many hundreds

of times since the Grims popularized it with the most beloved adaptations tweaking the plot to make it more palatable less blood in the shoes more animal friends that sort of thing with minor edits the story of Cinderella is no longer the stuff of childhood nightmares but not all Grim fairy tales are so easily reworked into heartwarming Stories the classic story of Hansel and grettle is still Haunting in its more modern telling lending itself more successfully to the horror genre than children's picture books unlike Cinderella few changes were made made to the later publications of Hansel

and grle by the Grims the story remains essentially the same a wood cutter and his family are suffering through a Great Famine the wife convinces the wood cutter to abandon his two children in the woods to save herself and her husband Hansel and grettle overhear this plot and Hansel fills his jacket pockets with white Pebbles the next day the wood cutter and his wife lead the children deep into the wood and tell them to sleep beside a fire while they cut wood the children awaken and discover they are alone but thanks to Hansel secretly dropping

Pebbles on their way into the woods they can follow the trail home again Hansel and grle hear the parents plotting to leave them even deeper in the woods but Hansel is unable to gather Pebbles and instead uses breadcrumbs to create a trail as they are LED deep into the forest but but when they try to follow the trail home the children discover birds have eaten the crumbs they wander the forest for days until they come across a little house made from bread with a roof made of cake and windows of clear sugar whilst eating pieces

of the house a very old woman appears inviting them inside promising to keep them safe but the old woman is really a witch and PE old Hansel soon finds himself trapped in a cage being fattened up for the witch to eat and grle is forced to ha water build fires and eat nothing but crayfish shells Hansel fools the witch who cannot see well by sticking a chicken bone through the bars of his cage each morning when the witch checks to see if he's fattened up enough to cook eventually the witch grows impatient and decides to

eat Hansel skinny or not for good measure she plans to trick Gretel into climbing into the oven to check the temperature then trap her inside and cook her too but grle realizes The Witch's plan and asks the old woman to show her how to climb inside when she does grle pushes her in slams the door and the witch burns up the children find chests full of pearls and precious stones inside the Witch's House and fill their pockets with the treasures before finding their way back to the father's house Hansel and gretel's father has Overjoyed his

children a well and tells them that his wife has died while they were away with the riches they took from The Witch's Bread House the trio can live happily ever after while the house made of bread and Cake was purely imaginary the circumstances that led to Hansel and grle being abandoned in the forest were chilling L very real families often went hungry in medieval Europe but this fairy tale was likely inspired by the Great Famine of 1315 across much of the continent it rained nearly constantly throughout most of the Summer and Autumn of 1314 and

then through most of the next two years crops rotted harvests yielded nothing and livestock drowned or starved as Supply dwindled food price is sword it was reported that even the king of England had difficulty procuring bread since grain had to be dried before it could be used to bake by the winter of 1315 1316 many peasants had resorted to eating the seed grain they had stored for planting in the spring in some areas people were forced to kill their dogs and horses for meat there were even rumors of cannibalism starving and terrified many resorted to

Unthinkable lents to feed themselves and their families They begged stole and even murdered for scraps of food many of the elderly voluntarily starved themselves so that the younger generations of their families could survive however there were many reports of infants and younger children being killed or abandoned to save their parents the heartache of watching them starve to death or like Hansel and gle's mother to ensure they had enough food for themselves it's estimated that about 5 to 15% of the entire population of Northern Europe died from starvation or related diseases by the time the Grim

recorded the story of Hansel and grle the Great Famine was a distant enough memory to be fodder for Fairy tiles but there was a time when being left to starve in the forest only to stumble across a woman who wanted to eat you was perhaps more of a cautionary tale than a fantasy with so much of Disney's success built on the foundations of Grim's fairy tales it's unsurprising that the company's first ever fulllength animated film was a retelling of a grim classic little Snow White the Disney version has plenty of Darkness with a wicked Queen

bent on killing her stepdaughter a poisoned apple and a terrifying Talking Mirror that calls to mind the classic Bloody Mary sleepover game of trying to summon a ghost in a dark bathroom however the Grim version is even darker starting with the little included in the title of their Tale in its original version Snow White is not a young woman or even a teenager she's 7 years old when her stepmother leared learns from her magic mirror that snow is the fairest maiden in the Kingdom overcome with Envy the evil queen summons a huntsman to take the

child into the forest and kill her asking him to bring back Snow's lungs and liver to prove she is dead just as the Huntsman is about to stab her heart Snow White convinces him to let her run away into the forest instead certain that wild animal would soon kill her anyway the Huntsman lets her go and brings the Queen the lungs and liver of a young boore instead the queen orders the cook to boil them with salt and settles into a meal of which she believes are the organs of her small stepdaughter meanwhile Snow White

finds her way to the home of Seven Dwarves who agree to let her stay if she will keep the house cook make beds wash set and knit for them when the queen asks her magic miror again miror miror on the wall who in this land is fatest of all she is shocked that Snow White is still alive and a thousand times fairer than she is the queen disguises herself as an old Peddler woman and goes to the home of the seven dwarfs where she convinces snow to try out the lace bodice braided from colored silk

the queen laces Snow's boders so tightly the child drops dead Al the queen thinks the dwarves save snow and again the queen learns from the miror that her stepdaughter is still alive again she disguises herself as a peddler tricking snow into buying a poisoned comb the dwarves save Snow White for the second time but when the queen returns with a poisoned Apple they're unable to revive snow again the dwarves cried over Snow White's body for three days but still she had rosy cheeks and appeared too alive to Betty instead they built a transparent glass coffin

for Snow White and placed her on a mountain side where she lay for a long long time never decaying eventually a prince found the coffin and fell so in love with the dead girl that he begged the dwarfs to let them take her home the prince refused to be parted from snow and forced his servants to carry the coffin alongside him wherever he went one day a servant became so angry about hafting the glass coffin to and fro that he opened the case and hit Snow White the blow dislodged the piece of The Poisoned Apple

from her throat and snow woke up the Overjoyed Prince told her she would become his wife the next day the evil queen dressed for the wedding unaware that the queen to be was her stepdaughter Snow White her magic meta told her the young Queen was the fairest of all and the Wicked Woman could not stop herself from seeing who the beautiful new interopa was after the queen discovered it was Snow White she was presented with a pair of iron shoes he over burning coals the evil queen was forced to step into the red Hut shoes

and dance until she felt dead apparently the brothers Grim had something of an affinity for mutilating the feet of their villains there are many other instances where the Grims version of well-known fairy tales contain far more Sinister elements than their contemporary counterparts in the original version of Little Red Riding Hood titled Little Red Cap the big bad wolf arrives early and eats both the grandmother and red a passing wood cutter checks on Grandma and finds the wolf asleep in her bed the wood cutter slices the wolf's stomach open and both red and her grandmother climb

out the trio fills the wolf with stones and celebrates their cleverness in Grim's Rapunzel the girl with the long hair trapped in the tower is impregnated by her visiting prince who throws himself from the tower window in grief after believing the Sorceress has killed rap unzel the prince falls into Thorns that poke out his eyes and wanders the forest blind for many years meanwhile Rapunzel has been secreted Away by the Sorceress to live in the wilderness with the twins she gave birth to the pair are eventually reunited and live happily ever after it's easy to

see why the original versions of these Tales were heavily edited in modern times but some were so dark that they've been left to languish in the Grim collection too disturbing to be modernized by even the fairy tale miners at Disney or even celon perhaps the most horrific of all these is Jacob and vilhelm Grims the juniper tree here is the story a wealthy man and his beautiful Pious wife wished desperately for a child but remained alone despite praying day and night one day the wife stood in front of their house eating an apple beside a

juniper tree while peeling the Apple she cut her finger and the blood fell into the snow the woman looked at the blood and said if only I had a child as red as blood and as white as snow her wish was granted and she became pregnant but grew very sick she made her husband promise to bury her beneath the juniper tree and when her son red as blood and white as snow was born the woman was so happy she died her husband buried her beneath the tree and though he grieved her greatly he eventually remarried

the rich man and his second wife had a daughter together and the wife began to resent the little boy who would inherit his father's wealth instead of her daughter she took her anger out on the child abusing him so terribly that the snow white boy was terrified every moment he was at home one day the Woman's little daughter marleene asked her mother if she might have a beautiful ripe Apple from a chest with a large heavy lid and sharp iron lock the woman gladly gave her child the sweet fruit but became filled with rage when

Marlene asked if her brother might have one too when he returned from school when the boy returned the woman told him to take an apple from the chest and as he bent over the fruit the woman slammed down the heavy lid of the chest slicing the boy's head off the woman knew she had to hide what she'd done so she set the boy in a chair by the door tied his head back to his neck with a white scarf and placed an apple in his hand when Marlene saw her brother she asked him for the

Apple but he did not respond marleene told her mother about the boy sitting so still and white and not answering her and the woman told her daughter to ask again and if he would not answer to box his ears so marleene returned to her brother and asked again if she might have the apple he had held when he did not answer marleene hit his ear and his head fell off the terrified Marlene ran to her mother and confessed through her tears that she had knocked her brother's head off the woman said they could not let

anyone know that Marlene had killed her brother and took the little boy chopped him into pieces put him into a pot and cooked him into a stew when the father came home the woman told him the boy had gone across the country to his mother's great uncle where he would stay for a while the father was sorrowful that his beloved son had left without saying goodbye and assumed Marlene was also crying because she missed her brother the father sat down to his stew and with each bite seemed to grow hungrier and hungrier until he had

eaten the entire pot by himself leaving a pile of bones beneath the table Marlene gathered the bones in a silk scarf and placed them beneath the juniper tree which began to move a mess M Rose from the tree a fire at its Center and a beautiful bird flew from the Flames the bird flew away landing on a Goldsmith's house and singing my mother she killed me my father he ate me my sister Marlene gathered all my bones tied them in a silken scarf and laid them beneath the juniper tree tweet tweet what a beautiful bird

I am the gold smith was so enchanted with the bird's song that he gave it a Golden Chain the bird then sang its song to a shoe maker he gave it a pair of red shoes and finally the bird went to a mill when it was given a millstone for its song then the bird flew to his father's house he held the gold chain and his right claw and in his left was the red shoes around his neck was the millstone the bird settled in the juniper tree and sang its song the father and Marlene

found the music beautiful but the woman heard only a roaring in her ears and fire in her veins the father went out to see the bird who dropped the golden chain around his neck Marlene went out next and the bird threw the red shoes down to her the woman felt the world was ending and decided to go out too to see if the bird would make her feel better but as she walked outside the bird threw the millstone at her head and she fell down dead the bird then transformed back into the boy took his

father and Marlene by the hand and led them back into the house where they sat down at the table to eat forgetting the child abuse murder and cannibalism entirely the evolution of Grim's fairy tales from their original dark and often gruesome narratives to the sanitized versions we know today reflects societal changes and values norms and the purpose of Storytelling many of these stories were initially intended as cautionary tales that Meed the harsh realities of early 19th century life and their evolution into the more romanticized fairy t we know today has allowed them to remain relevant

for centuries and though we would not share these dark versions with children now revisiting them in their most Sinister form is still endlessly entertaining thank you for watching and thank you to this episode sponsor June's Journey you can start playing immediately by following the link in the description or scanning the QR code on screen right then take care and I'll see you next time with another story to make you say well I never