Polish University Uncovers 27 Books from the Brothers Grimm Collection
Scholars at Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU) in Poznań, Poland have just made an extraordinary literary discovery - 27 books that once belonged to the renowned German folklorists and linguists, the Brothers Grimm. Over the course of their illustrious academic careers in the early 1800s, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm amassed an impressive collection of 8,000 books as the leading scholars in Germany.
However, much of the Grimm brothers' extensive personal library was scattered from Berlin through donations in the aftermath of World War II. Despite this dispersal, a recent article published by the university described the new find as "a treasure" for researchers of the Grimm brothers' work and legacy. While the brothers spent time working together in Kassel, Göttingen, and even Savigny, the pinnacle of their careers as cultural anthropologists was their stint in Berlin, where they were invited by King Frederick William IV in 1840 to join the prestigious Royal Academy of Sciences.
The meandering path that eventually led 27 books from the Grimm collection to the shelves of the AMU library is not entirely clear. Some volumes were left to the University Library in Berlin by Wilhelm Grimm's son Hermann after his death. Meanwhile, in 1898 the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Bibliothek in Poznań received a donation of Grimm books from Berlin, and that collection later became part of the newly established University of Poznań in 1919.
Through painstaking research, professors Eliza Pieciul-Karmińska and Anna Loba, along with AMU librarian Renata Wilgosiewicz-Skutecka, were able to track the arrival of these 27 books by cross-referencing them against inventories compiled by the renowned German librarian Ludwig Denecke, as well as a catalog of incunables (pre-printing press books) published in 2002 by AMU professor Wieslaw Wydra, according to artnet.
The newly discovered Grimm artifacts encompass a range of materials, including incunables, old printed works, and comparatively modern 19th century German history books. Highlights include a Bible from Basel circa 1491 and a volume on Charlemagne from Lyon dating back about a century later. Many of the books still bear the stamps and insignia of the Berlin library that loaned them out in 1945, providing a fascinating window into the Grimms' scholarly habits and annotations.
Energized by these exciting finds, the AMU research team is now planning an international mission, led by Professor Pieciul-Karmińska and her colleague Holger Ehrhardt from the University of Kassel, to uncover even more of the lost volumes from the legendary Grimm brothers' collection.
