No single individual in German letters did as much to form the way Germans thought about their past as did Jacob Grimm. His research among medieval manuscripts laid the foundations for subsequent research in folklore and custom, law, literature, linguistics, and mythology; his historical grammar of the German language illuminated the roots and internal structure of the German language and its interconnections within larger linguistic groupings; and the historical dictionary of the German language undertaken with his brother Wilhelm was at the time an organizational masterpiece and remains the standard work on the historical development and usage of the German language.

Jacob Grimm was born in Hanau on 4 January 1785 to Philipp Wilhelm Grimm, a German official, and Dorothea Zimmer Grimm. The Grimm family was descended from Reformed (Zwinglian Protestant) forebears, many of whom had served as pastors in Hanau and Steinau. Politically and officially allied with the count...