"'We dare not mourn, we of the Patrol: certainly not beforehand. I should save pity, sense of guilt, for my poor unwitting friends and colleagues, the brothers Grimm. Emma's life is better than most of mankind will ever have known.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465, 1858, p. 401.
So what happened to the Grimms? I googled their bios. See here.
Emma's life:
poverty;
peasantry;
domestic service;
death of TB at forty one.
I hope that most of mankind will know lives better than that in the future.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm not sure I agree entirely with your comments about Professor Ganz's maid Emma. Yes, she was born poor but her fortunes seemed to have greatly improved after she became an employee of Ganz. Also, Emma was to marry a young man Ganz approved of. So, I agree that compared to so much of the human race thru out history, her fate was not that bad.
As for the Brothers Grimm, what Professor Ganz meant that future centuries were eventually to dismiss as erroneous and unfounded much of their scholarly labors as philologists. The Grimmms are best known today for their collecting of more than 200 folk tales.
Sean
Sean,
The Grimms were also expelled and impoverished because they refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the King.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
While I regret the Grimms were dismissed by the King of Hanover in 1837, I don't think it was per wrong of the king to ask for that, because university professors were civil service employees. Eventually, the Grimms took posts at the University of Berlin, the capital of Prussia--and I wonder if university professors there were also members of the civil service.
It all leads me to conclude the gov't, any gov't, should not be meddling with running things like schools, universities, and hospitals.
Sean
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