Meet Lotte Grimm!
Lotte Grimm lived in Germany about 200 years ago. Her full name was Charlotte Amalie Grimm but her family called her Lotte, or Lottchen or Malchen. Lottchen means “dear little Lottie” and Malchen “dear little Amalie.” Her best friend was Dortchen (Dorothy in English), who lived across the street, where her father had a pharmacy. The girls often went to each other’s homes to help each other with chores, or just to hang out. They often sang songs together and told stories.
Lotte had 5 brothers. Jacob and Wilhelm, the eldest, are very famous for collecting fairy tales. Ludwig was a visual artist, who made several drawings of Lotte and also illustrated his brothers’ fairy tale books. Then there were Carl and Ferdinand. Lotte was the youngest child.
Lotte’s letters
In those days girls didn’t go to school. They stayed at home, helping with the household tasks, like cooking, cleaning and the laundry. On weekends, the schoolteacher would visit the Grimms’ home to teach Lotte how to spell. He gave her a stick with a nail at the end. Holding the stick, she had to trace letters with the nail until she knew them by heart.
Lotte wrote her first letter to Wilhelm and Jacob when she was 6. She didn’t know how to write by herself yet, so her brother Carl wrote down in pencil what she wanted to say. Then she traced over the letters with a quill. That’s a goose feather: in those days you had to dip the tip of a quill in ink to write with. Here’s her name (you can see the pencil underneath a bit):
Later Lotte wrote letters to her brothers when they were away, but also to her many girl friends. They would write each other about serious but also funny things that had happened.
Lotte also loved reading, dancing, going to the theatre, to fairs and to fireworks. Her brother Ludwig wrote that she was very musical. He drew a picture of her playing the guitar, when she was grown up.
Fairy tales
When people say “The Brothers Grimm” they usually mean Wilhelm and Jacob. They collected many of the fairy tales we know today: Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty and many more. They didn’t write these tales themselves. Many fairy tales are old stories from before the time you could buy books in shops. People just used to tell them to each other for fun. But in Lotte’s time these tales were beginning to disappear. People could buy books to read, or went to the theatre. They began to forget the old tales. That’s why the Brothers Grimm decided to collect them. They asked people to tell them the tales so they could write them down word for word. Then they published them in books, so that people could read them instead.
Broken stories
Sometimes, the fairy tales were ‘broken.’ The people who told them to the Brothers Grimm didn’t always remember them right. Or sometimes, different people told a story different ways. So the Brothers had to fix some of the stories before they could publish them. Later on, they changed the fairy tales to make people like them better. They took out things that were shocking and changed things they didn’t like. So the fairy tales we know are very different from the ones people told in the old days. And they keep changing! Even today, fairy tales change every time someone makes a new film or play or book about them.
Make your own!
Have you ever tried making your own fairy tale? Is also fun to change one that you know! What if Red Riding Hood didn’t meet a wolf in the forest, but a cow? Or what if Rapunzel had really short hair?
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Kris Fleerackers 