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university life. Dominated by an enormous hilltop castle – once
owned by the local
Landgrave
,
or count – this beautiful medieval city
was where they first developed an interest in folk tales, and statues of
goats, horses, even a giant glass slipper line the steep, cobbled lanes.
Taking a well-deserved break at the top of the hill, I pop into the
cosy, half-timbered Bückingsgarten café (
bueckingsgarten-marburg.
de
),
converted in 1701 from one of the castle gatehouses. It’s easy to
imagine the student brothers coming here with their chums and
having coffee and a
Laugenbrezel
(
pretzel). The pealing of church
bells interrupts my daydream. I must hurry back down the hill to my
carriage before it turns into a pumpkin – or gets a parking ticket.
“
ARE
YOU A STUDENT?” the museum’s ticket-seller asked
her. “This fairy-tale route must be working its magic
already,” she thought.
The city of Kassel, where the brothers worked as librarians, is my
last stop of the day, but there’s just time for lunch at Knallhütte
Brewhaus (
knallhuette.de
),
first. This microbrewery on Kassel’s
outskirts was home to Dorothea ‘The storyteller woman’ Viehmann,
one of the main sources for the tales, and the Grimm influence is well
in evidence here. Stained-glass characters fill the windows and
there’s a menu full of Grimm=inspired dishes, including a Cinderella
dish complete with a baked potato carved in the shape of a slipper.
From 27 April, Kassel will play host to Expedition Grimm
(
expedition-grimm.de
),
which promises to provide “a novel,
hands-on way of experiencing the multifaceted impact of the
brothers Grimm”. I content myself with a trip to the permanent
museum dedicated to the brothers (
grimm.de
),
which tells their early
story – as fantastic a tale of rags to riches as any they wrote.
Bookish Jacob and creative Wilhelm enjoyed a privileged life
until the untimely death of their father in 1796, when they were 10
and 11. Suddenly, they, their four siblings and mother were thrust
into poverty. Their tale might have ended there, had not their aunt,
who was lady-in-waiting to the wife of the Landgrave of Hesse,
funded their education. Without the help of this ‘fairy godmother’,
their idea to make a book of folk tales might never have happened.
Although they didn’t actually author the stories that made
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