Third-party funded projects
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Digital fairy tale reference library by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
The Brothers Grimm left behind a great deal of handwriting in the books they used for the Children's and Household Tales. A new digitization project is now making these culturally and historically significant documents accessible to the public. Partners from Würzburg, Berlin and Kassel are involved; the German Research Foundation is funding the project.
When you hear "Brothers Grimm", you immediately think of Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and other fairy tales - and not only in Germany: the collection of "Children's and Household Tales" compiled by the folklorists and linguists Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859) is one of the most famous works of world literature.
Most of the brothers' private library can be found in the university library of the Humboldt University in Berlin. The books, of which around 700 relate to the Brothers Grimm's Children's and Household Tales, are also of particular value because of the traces of work they contain: the Grimms crossed out passages of text, made handwritten notes in the margins and inserted notepads.
Until now, anyone seeking access to these culturally and historically significant sources has had to rely on the originals. A new digitization project is therefore pursuing the goal of making the books digitally accessible, with all their traces of use and provenance - the latter are indications of the origin and ownership history of the works. This digital access should also enable new methodological approaches to research for the first time.
Project partners from Würzburg, Berlin and Kassel
Two researchers from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg are responsible for the technological part of the interdisciplinary project "Digital Fairy Tale Reference Library of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm": Professor Frank Puppe, Head of the Chair of Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Systems, and Dr. Christian Reul from the Center for Philology and Digitality (ZPD) "Kallimachos".
Dr. Yong-Mi Rauch from the University Library of the HU Berlin is responsible for the indexing, digitization and publication of a selected part of the collection. In terms of philology, the project is being supervised by Professor Holger Ehrhardt from the "Works and Activities of the Brothers Grimm" department at the University of Kassel. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding the project. It will start on September 1, 2024 and run for three years.
A challenge for computer science
In addition to the full-text indexing of the printed texts, the focus of the project is on identifying, transcribing and linking the numerous handwritten annotations. This is a particular challenge: the automatic methods developed to date for font and layout recognition are not capable of producing usable full texts of annotated prints and simultaneously evaluating handwritten artifacts.
The JMU team wants to solve this problem with methods for segmenting and deciphering artifacts using neural networks. It wants to develop tools that automatically recognize the handwritten annotations, divide them into categories, assign them to the authors Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and other persons and transcribe them, i.e. translate them into digital writing. In addition, the annotations are to be assigned to the printed text on the book pages to which they refer.
Tool for the indexing of further works
All project results will be made publicly accessible on the Internet and made available for further use. The web viewer will also contain specific research functions for navigating the annotations. As a result, the project partners will be able to provide a routine workflow that will enable the digitization of further segments of the Grimm Library and other scholarly libraries.
The Correspondence Between the Brothers Grimm and Their Older Relatives (1789-1815). Completion of the Annotated Edition of the Letters from the Early Family Circle of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
In contrast to the brothers' scholarly correspondence, the correspondence between Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and their older relatives, which comprises around 400 letters, has not yet been adequately dealt with. Yet this correspondence, which extends from Jacob Grimm's earliest written documents from 1789 to the death of his aunt Henriette Zimmer (1748-1815), accompanies and documents the decisive years in the development of the brothers into the founders of a scientific and literary life's work with a worldwide presence today. At the same time, these letters span the politically transformative years from the French Revolution to the Congress of Vienna - particularly impressively documented in the letters of the aunt, who accompanied the Hessian Electress into exile in Gotha as chambermaid during Napoleonic rule (1807-1813). The correspondence thus represents an important source for this saddle period, as it illustrates many aspects of the everyday life of the Grimm family and their social network. In particular, it provides - in the context of regional and contemporary historical ties - a wealth of previously unknown information on the brothers' origins, childhood, youth, student days and the early beginnings of their professional activities.
After the early death of their father, it was not only their grandfather Johann Hermann Zimmer (1709-1798) but also their female relatives, above all Henriette Zimmer, who were instrumental in promoting the careers of the two brothers. Henriette Zimmer's letters are therefore a particular focus of the edition project, and not only in terms of their number. Of particular interest here are, for example, references to the brothers' early network and Jacob Grimm's role in the Kingdom of Westphalia. In addition, both the letters of the aunt and those of the mother Dorothea Grimm (1755-1808), who were by no means among the most passionate and comprehensively educated letter writers of their time, are also important as independent documents.
They raise general questions about the acquisition of language and writing by women and their linguistic competence in the middle classes of the time, about the specific perception and representation of events, objects and people - including Henriette Zimmer's role as an unmarried and childless chambermaid at the court of Hesse and Kassel. The second larger complex is the correspondence with the grandfather, which represents the earliest surviving corpus of letters of the Brothers Grimm as a whole and which, above all, also provides important information on the promotion of his grandchildren in cultural and personal terms.
The Grimm brothers' private correspondence with their older relatives thus represents an important biographical, linguistic, cultural and historical source - a correspondence that develops from the beginnings of a common language level to an exchange of letters at very different linguistic levels, but which is characterized throughout by the assurance of a close emotional bond. The edition thus ties in with the recent increase in research interest in private correspondence, especially female correspondence, and addresses not only aspects of everyday life, but also the linguistic means of expression in the bourgeoisie around 1800, which was struggling for social advancement or at least security.
The annotated edition of this correspondence, a little-known and only rudimentary group of sources, has long been a research desideratum. The aim of this project is to produce a complete critical edition of these family letters, which will contribute to the biographical, regional, linguistic and general historical context of the Grimm brothers' life's work and will also provide essential new material for further Grimm research.