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Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm (die Brüder Grimm or die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of folktales, popularizing stories such as "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel), "The Frog Prince" ("Der Froschkönig"), "Hansel and Gretel" ("Hänsel und Gretel), "Town Musicians of Bremen" ("Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten"), "Little Red Riding Hood" ("Rotkäppchen"), "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin" ("Rumpelstilzchen"), "Sleeping Beauty" ("Dornröschen"), and "Snow White" ("Schneewittchen"). Their first collection of folktales, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), began publication in 1812.

The Brothers Grimm spent their formative years in the town of Hanau in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. Their father's death in 1796 (when Jacob was 11 and Wilhelm was 10) caused great poverty for the family and affected the brothers many years after. Both brothers attended the University of Marburg, where they developed a curiosity about German folklore, which grew into a lifelong dedication to collecting German folktales.

The rise of Romanticism in 19th-century Europe revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the Brothers Grimm represented a pure form of national literature and culture. With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folktales, they established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. Between 1812 and 1857 their first collection was revised and republished many times, growing from 86 stories to more than 200. In addition to writing and modifying folktales, the brothers wrote collections of well-respected Germanic and Scandinavian mythologies, and in 1838 they began writing a definitive German dictionary (Deutsches Wörterbuch), which they were unable to finish.

The popularity of the Grimms' collected folktales has endured. They are available in more than 100 translations and have been adapted by renowned filmmakers, including Lotte Reiniger and Walt Disney, in films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the mid-20th century, Nazi Germany used the tales as propaganda; later in the 20th century, psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim reaffirmed the work's value despite the cruelty and violence in some of the tales' original versions, which were eventually sanitized by the Grimms themselves.

Early lives

Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm were born on 4 January 1785 and 24 February 1786, respectively, in Hanau in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, within the Holy Roman Empire (present-day Germany), to Philipp Wilhelm Grimm, a jurist, and Dorothea Grimm (née Zimmer), daughter of a Kassel city councilman. They were the second- and third-eldest surviving siblings in a family of nine children, three of whom died in infancy. In 1791 the family moved to the countryside town of Steinau during Philipp's employment there as a district magistrate (Amtmann). The family became prominent members of the community, residing in a large home surrounded by fields. Biographer Jack Zipes writes that the brothers were happy in Steinau and "clearly fond of country life". The children were educated at home by private tutors, receiving strict instruction as Lutherans, which instilled in both a lifelong religious faith. Later, they attended local schools.

In 1796 Philipp Grimm died of pneumonia, causing great poverty for the large family. Dorothea was forced to relinquish the brothers' servants and large house, depending on financial support from her father and sister, who was then the first lady-in-waiting at the court of William I, Elector of Hesse. Jacob was the eldest living son, forced at age 11 to assume adult responsibilities (shared with Wilhelm) for the next two years. The two brothers then followed the advice of their grandfather, who continually exhorted them to be industrious.

The brothers left Steinau and their family in 1798 to attend the Friedrichsgymnasium in Kassel, which had been arranged and paid for by their aunt. By then they were without a male provider (their grandfather died that year), forcing them to rely entirely on each other and become exceptionally close. The two brothers differed in temperament—Jacob was introspective and Wilhelm was outgoing (although he often suffered from ill health)—but shared a strong work ethic and excelled in their studies. In Kassel they became acutely aware of their inferior social status relative to "high-born" students who received more attention. Each brother graduated at the head of his class, Jacob in 1803 and Wilhelm in 1804 (he missed a year of school due to scarlet fever).

Marburg

After graduation from the Friedrichsgymnasium, the brothers attended the University of Marburg. The university was small with about 200 students, and there they became painfully aware that students of lower social status were not treated equally. They were disqualified from admission because of their social standing and had to request a dispensation to study law. Wealthier students received stipends, but the brothers were excluded even from tuition aid. Their poverty kept them from student activities or university social life, but their outsider status worked in their favor and they pursued their studies with extra vigor.

Inspired by their law professor, Friedrich von Savigny, who awakened in them an interest in history and philology, the brothers studied medieval German literature. They shared Savigny's desire to see the unification of the 200 German principalities into a single state. Through Savigny and his circle of friends—German romantics such as Clemens Brentano and Ludwig Achim von Arnim—the Grimms were introduced to the ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder, who thought that German literature should revert to simpler forms, which he defined as Volkspoesie (natural poetry)—as opposed to Kunstpoesie (artistic poetry). The brothers dedicated themselves with great enthusiasm to their studies, of which Wilhelm wrote in his autobiography, "the ardor with which we studied Old German helped us overcome the spiritual depression of those days."

Jacob was still financially responsible for his mother, brother, and younger siblings in 1805, so he accepted a post in Paris as Savigny's research assistant. On his return to Marburg he was forced to abandon his studies to support the family, whose poverty was so extreme that food was often scarce, and take a job with the Hessian War Commission. In a letter to his aunt from this time, Wilhelm wrote of their circumstances: "We five people eat only three portions and only once a day".

Kassel
Jacob found full-time employment in 1808 when he was appointed court librarian to the King of Westphalia and went on to become a librarian in Kassel. After their mother's death that year, he became fully responsible for his younger siblings. He arranged and paid for his brother Ludwig's studies at art school and for Wilhelm's extended visit to Halle to seek treatment for heart and respiratory ailments, after which Wilhelm joined Jacob as librarian in Kassel At Brentano's request, the brothers had begun collecting folk tales in a cursory manner in 1807. According to Zipes, at this point "the Grimms were unable to devote all their energies to their research and did not have a clear idea about the significance of collecting folk tales in this initial phase."

During their employment as librarians—which paid little but afforded them ample time for research—the brothers experienced a productive period of scholarship, publishing books between 1812 and 1830. In 1812 they published their first volume of 86 folk tales, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, followed quickly by two volumes of German legends and a volume of early literary history. They went on to publish works about Danish and Irish folk tales (and also Norse mythology), while continuing to edit the German folk tale collection. These works became so widely recognized that the brothers received honorary doctorates from universities in Marburg, Berlin, and Breslau (now Wrocław).

Göttingen
On 15 May 1825 Wilhelm married Henriette Dorothea Dortchen Wild, a pharmacist's daughter and childhood friend who had given the brothers several tales. Jacob never married but continued to live in the household with Wilhelm and Dortchen. In 1830 both brothers were overlooked when the post of chief librarian came available, which disappointed them greatly. They moved the household to Göttingen in the Kingdom of Hanover, where they took employment at the University of Göttingen—Jacob as a professor and head librarian and Wilhelm as a professor.

For the next seven years the brothers continued to research, write, and publish. In 1835 Jacob published the well-regarded German Mythology (Deutsche Mythologie); Wilhelm continued to edit and prepare the third edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen for publication. The two brothers taught German studies at the university, becoming well-respected in the newly established discipline.

In 1837 the brothers lost their university posts after joining the rest of the Göttingen Seven in protest. The 1830s were a period of political upheaval and peasant revolt in Germany, leading to the movement for democratic reform known as Young Germany. The brothers were not directly aligned with the Young Germans, but they and five of their colleagues reacted against the demands of Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, who in 1837 dissolved the parliament of Hanover and demanded oaths of allegiance from civil servants—including professors at the University of Göttingen. For refusing to sign the oath, the seven professors were dismissed and three were deported from Hanover—including Jacob, who went to Kassel. He was later joined there by Wilhelm, Dortchen, and their four children.

The brothers were without income and again in extreme financial difficulty in 1838, so they began what would become a lifelong project—the writing of a definitive dictionary, the German Dictionary (Deutsches Wörterbuch)—whose first volume was not published until 1854. The brothers again depended on friends and supporters for financial assistance and influence in finding employment.

Berlin and later years
In 1840, Savigny and Bettina von Arnim appealed successfully to Frederick William IV of Prussia on behalf of the brothers, who were offered posts at the University of Berlin. In addition to teaching posts, the Academy of Sciences offered them stipends to continue their research. Once they had established their household in Berlin they directed their efforts towards the work on the German dictionary and continued to publish their research. Jacob turned his attention to researching German legal traditions and the history of the German language, which was published in the late 1840s and early 1850s; Wilhelm began researching medieval literature while editing new editions of Hausmärchen.

After the revolutions of 1848 in the German states the brothers were elected to the civil parliament. Jacob became a prominent member of the National Assembly at Mainz. But their political activities were short-lived, as their hope for a unified Germany dwindled and their disenchantment grew. In the late 1840s Jacob resigned his university position and published The History of the German Language (Geschichte der deutschen Sprache). Wilhelm continued at his university post until 1852. After retiring from teaching, the brothers devoted themselves to the German Dictionary for the rest of their lives. Wilhelm died of an infection in Berlin on 16 December 1859, and Jacob, deeply upset by his death, became increasingly reclusive. He continued working on the dictionary until his own death on 20 September 1863. Zipes writes of the Grimms' dictionary, and of their very large body of work: "Symbolically the last word was Frucht (fruit)."

Background
The rise of romanticism, romantic nationalism, and trends in valuing popular culture in the early 19th century revived interest in fairy tales, which had declined since their late 17th-century peak. Johann Karl August Musäus published a popular collection of tales called Volksmärchen der Deutschen between 1782 and 1787; the Grimms aided the revival with their folklore collection, built on the conviction that a national identity could be found in popular culture and with the common folk (Volk). They collected and published their tales as a reflection of German cultural identity. In the first collection, though, they included Charles Perrault's tales, published in Paris in 1697 and written for the literary salons of an aristocratic French audience. Scholar Lydie Jean says that Perrault created a myth that his tales came from the common people and reflected existing folklore to justify including them—even though many of them were original.

The brothers were directly influenced by Brentano and von Arnim, who edited and adapted the folk songs of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn or cornucopia). They began the collection with the purpose of creating a scholarly treatise of traditional stories, and of preserving the stories as they had been handed from generation to generation—a practice threatened by increased industrialization. Maria Tatar, professor of German studies at Harvard University, argues that it is precisely the handing from generation to generation and the genesis in the oral tradition that gives folk tales important mutability. Versions of tales differ from region to region, "picking up bits and pieces of local culture and lore, drawing a turn of phrase from a song or another story, and fleshing out characters with features taken from the audience witnessing their performance."

But Tatar argues that the Grimms appropriated as uniquely German stories, such as "Little Red Riding Hood", that had existed in many versions and regions throughout Europe, because they believed that such stories reflected Germanic culture. Furthermore, the brothers saw fragments of old religions and faiths reflected in the stories, which they thought continued to exist and survive through the telling of stories.

Methodology
When Jacob returned to Marburg from Paris in 1806, their friend Brentano sought the brothers' help in adding to his collection of folk tales, at which time the brothers began to gather tales in an organized fashion. By 1810 they had produced a manuscript collection of several dozen tales, written after inviting storytellers to their home and transcribing what they heard. These tales were heavily modified in transcription; many had roots in previously written sources. At Brentano's request, they printed and sent him copies of the 53 tales that they collected for inclusion in his third volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Brentano either ignored or forgot about the tales, leaving the copies in a church in Alsace where they were found in 1920 and became known as the Ölenberg manuscript. It is the earliest extant version of the Grimms' collection and has become a valuable source to scholars studying the development of the Grimms' collection from the time of its inception. The manuscript was published in 1927 and again in 1975.

The brothers gained a reputation for collecting tales from peasants, although many tales came from middle-class or aristocratic acquaintances. Wilhelm's wife, Henriette Dorothea (Dortchen) Wild, and her family, with their nursery maid, told the brothers some of the more well-known tales, such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Sleeping Beauty". Wilhelm collected some tales after befriending August von Haxthausen, whom he visited in 1811 in Westphalia where he heard stories from von Haxthausen's circle of friends. Several of the storytellers were of Huguenot ancestry, telling tales of French origin such as those told to the Grimms by Marie Hassenpflug, an educated woman of French Huguenot ancestry, and it is probable that these informants were familiar with Perrault's Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Stories from Past Times). Other tales were collected from Dorothea Viehmann, the wife of a middle-class tailor and also of French descent. Despite her middle-class background, in the first English translation she was characterized as a peasant and given the name Gammer Gretel. At least one tale, Gevatter Tod (Grim Reaper), was provided by composer Wilhelmine Schwertzell, with whom Wilhelm had a long correspondence.

According to scholars such as Tatar and Ruth Bottigheimer, some of the tales probably originated in written form during the medieval period with writers such as Straparola and Boccaccio, but were modified in the 17th century and again rewritten by the Grimms. Moreover, Tatar writes that the brothers' goal of preserving and shaping the tales as something uniquely German at a time of French occupation was a form of "intellectual resistance", and in so doing they established a methodology for collecting and preserving folklore that set the model followed later by writers throughout Europe during periods of occupation.

Writing
From 1807 onward, the brothers added to the collection. Jacob established the framework, maintained through many iterations; from 1815 until his death, Wilhelm assumed sole responsibility for editing and rewriting the tales. He made the tales stylistically similar, added dialogue, removed pieces "that might detract from a rustic tone", improved the plots, and incorporated psychological motifs. Ronald Murphy writes in The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove that the brothers, particularly Wilhelm, also added religious and spiritual motifs to the tales. He believes that Wilhelm "gleaned" bits from old Germanic faiths, Norse mythology, Roman and Greek mythology, and biblical stories that he reshaped.

Over the years, Wilhelm worked extensively on the prose; he expanded and added detail to the stories to the point that many of them grew to twice the length they had in the earliest published editions. In the later editions Wilhelm polished the language to make it more enticing to a bourgeois audience, eliminated sexual elements, and added Christian elements. After 1819 he began writing original tales for children (children were not initially considered the primary audience) and adding didactic elements to existing tales.

Some changes were made in light of unfavorable reviews, particularly from those who objected that not all the tales were suitable for children because of scenes of violence and sexuality. He worked to modify plots for many of the stories; for example, "Rapunzel" in the first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen clearly shows a sexual relationship between the prince and the girl in the tower, which he edited out in subsequent editions. Tatar writes that morals were added (in the second edition a king's regret was added to the scene in which his wife is to be burned at the stake) and often the characters in the tale were amended to appear more German: "every fairy (Fee), prince (Prinz) and princess (Prinzessin)—all words of French origin—was transformed into a more Teutonic-sounding enchantress (Zauberin) or wise woman (weise Frau), king's son (Königssohn), king's daughter (Königstochter)."

Themes and analysis
The Grimms' legacy contains legends, novellas, and folk stories, the vast majority of which were not intended as children's tales. Von Arnim was concerned about the content of some of the tales—such as those that showed children being eaten—and suggested adding a subtitle to warn parents of the content. Instead the brothers added an introduction with cautionary advice that parents steer children toward age-appropriate stories. Despite von Arnim's unease, none of the tales were eliminated from the collection; the brothers believed that all the tales were of value and reflected inherent cultural qualities. Furthermore, the stories were didactic in nature at a time when discipline relied on fear, according to scholar Linda Dégh, who explains that tales such as "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Hansel and Gretel" were written as "warning tales" for children.

The stories in Kinder- und Hausmärchen include scenes of violence that have since been sanitized. For example, in the Grimms' original version of "Snow White", the Queen is Little Snow White's mother, not her stepmother, but still orders her Huntsman to kill Snow White (her biological daughter) and bring home the child's lungs and liver so that she can eat them; the story ends with the Queen dancing at Snow White's wedding, wearing a pair of red-hot iron shoes that kill her. Another story, "The Goose Girl", has a servant stripped naked and pushed into a barrel "studded with sharp nails" pointing inward and then rolled down the street. The Grimms' version of "The Frog Prince" describes the princess throwing the frog against a wall instead of kissing him. To some extent the cruelty and violence may reflected the medieval culture from which the tales originated, such as scenes of witches burning, as described in "The Six Swans".

Tales with a spinning motif are broadly represented in the collection. In her essay "Tale Spinners: Submerged Voices in Grimms' Fairy Tales", Bottigheimer argues that these stories reflect the degree to which spinning was crucial in the life of women in the 19th century and earlier. Spinning, particularly of flax, was commonly performed in the home by women. Many stories begin by describing the occupation of their main character, as in "There once was a miller", yet spinning is never mentioned as an occupation; this appears to be because the brothers did not consider it an occupation. Instead, spinning was a communal activity, frequently performed in a Spinnstube (spinning room), a place where women most likely kept the oral traditions alive by telling stories while engaged in tedious work. In the stories, a woman's personality is often represented by her attitude toward spinning; a wise woman might be a spinster and Bottigheimer writes that the spindle was the symbol of a "diligent, well-ordered womanhood". In some stories, such as "Rumpelstiltskin", spinning is associated with a threat; in others, spinning might be avoided by a character who is either too lazy or not accustomed to spinning because of her high social status.

The Grimms' work is also open to wider feminist critique. For example, Emma Tennant writes: "But the worst of it was that two men—the Brothers Grimm—listened to these old tales told by mothers to their daughters; and they decided to record them for posterity. ... But the Brothers Grimm could understand only the tales of courage and manliness and chivalry on the part of the boys. The girls were relegated to virtues—Patient Griselda; or sheer physical beauty—Sleeping Beauty; Beauty and the Beast. Always we must read that our heroine is a Beauty."

The tales were also criticized for being insufficiently German, which influenced the tales that the brothers included and their use of language. But scholars such as Heinz Rölleke say that the stories are an accurate depiction of German culture, showing "rustic simplicity [and] sexual modesty". German culture is deeply rooted in the forest (wald), a dark dangerous place to be avoided, most particularly the old forests with large oak trees, and yet a place where Little Red Riding Hood's mother sent her daughter to deliver food to her grandmother's house.

Some critics, such as Alistair Hauke, use Jungian analysis to say that the deaths of the brothers' father and grandfather are the reason for the Grimms' tendency to idealize and excuse fathers, as well as the predominance of female villains in the tales, such as the wicked stepmother and stepsisters in "Cinderella", but this disregards the fact that they were collectors, not authors of the tales. Another possible influence is found in stories such as "The Twelve Brothers", which mirrors the brothers' family structure of several brothers facing and overcoming opposition. Some of the tales have autobiographical elements, and according to Zipes the work may have been a "quest" to replace the family life lost after their father died. The collection includes 41 tales about siblings, which Zipes says are representative of Jacob and Wilhelm. Many of the sibling stories follow a simple plot where the characters lose a home, work industriously at a specific task, and in the end find a new home.

Editions
Between 1812 and 1864, Kinder- und Hausmärchen was published 17 times: seven of the "Large edition" (Große Ausgabe) and ten of the "Small edition" (Kleine Ausgabe). The Large editions contained all the tales collected to date, extensive annotations, and scholarly notes written by the brothers; the Small editions had only 50 tales and were intended for children. Emil Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm's younger brother, illustrated the Small editions, adding Christian symbolism to the drawings, such as depicting Cinderella's mother as an angel and adding a Bible to the bedside table of Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother.

The first volume was published in 1812 with 86 folk tales, and a second volume with 70 additional tales was published late in 1814 (dated 1815 on the title page); together the two volumes and their 156 tales are considered the first of the (annotated) Large editions. A second expanded edition with 170 tales was published in 1819, followed in 1822 by a volume of scholarly commentary and annotations. Five more Large editions were published in 1837, 1840, 1843, 1850, and 1857. The seventh and final edition of 1857 contained 211 tales—200 numbered folk tales and 11 legends.

In Germany Kinder- und Hausmärchen, commonly Grimms' Fairy Tales in English, was also released in a "popular poster-sized Bilderbogen (broadsides)" format and in single-story formats for the more popular tales such as "Hansel and Gretel". The stories were often added to collections by other authors without respect to copyright as the tales became a focus of interest for children's book illustrators, with well-known artists such as Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, and Edmund Dulac illustrating. Another popular edition released in the mid-19th century included elaborate etchings by George Cruikshank. Upon the brothers' deaths, the copyright went to Wilhelm's son Hermann Grimm, who continued the practice of printing the volumes in expensive and complete editions, but after 1893, when copyright lapsed, various publishers began to print the stories in many formats and editions. In the 21st century, Kinder- und Hausmärchen is a universally recognized text. Jacob's and Wilhelm's collection of stories has been translated to more than 160 languages; 120 different editions of the text are available for sale in the US alone.

Philology
While at the University of Marburg, the brothers came to see culture as tied to language and regarded the purest cultural expression in the grammar of a language. They moved away from Brentano's practice—and that of the other romanticists—who frequently changed original oral styles of folk tale to a more literary style, which the brothers considered artificial. They thought that the style of the people (the volk) reflected a natural and divinely inspired poetry (naturpoesie)—as opposed to the kunstpoesie (art poetry), which they saw as artificially constructed. As literary historians and scholars they delved into the origins of stories and attempted to retrieve them from the oral tradition without loss of the original traits of oral language.

The brothers strongly believed that the dream of national unity and independence relied on a full knowledge of the cultural past that was reflected in folklore. They worked to discover and crystallize a kind of Germanness in the stories they collected in the belief that folklore contained kernels of mythologies and legends crucial to understanding the essence of German culture. In examining culture from a philological point of view they sought to establish connections between German law, culture, and local beliefs.

The Grimms considered the tales to have origins in traditional Germanic folklore, which they thought had been "contaminated" by later literary tradition. In the shift from the oral tradition to the printed book, tales were translated from regional dialects to Standard German (Hochdeutsch or High German). But over the course of the many modifications and revisions, the Grimms sought to reintroduce regionalisms, dialects, and Low German to the tales—to reintroduce the language of the original form of the oral tale.

As early as 1812 they published Die beiden ältesten deutschen Gedichte aus dem achten Jahrhundert: Das Lied von Hildebrand und Hadubrand und das Weißenbrunner Gebet (The Two Oldest German Poems of the Eighth Century: The Song of Hildebrand and Hadubrand and the Wessobrunn Prayer); the Song of Hildebrand and Hadubrand is a ninth-century German heroic song, while the Wessobrunn Prayer is the earliest-known German heroic song.

Between 1816 and 1818 the brothers published a two-volume work, Deutsche Sagen (German Legends), consisting of 585 German legends. Jacob undertook most of the work of collecting and editing the legends, which he organized according to region and historical (ancient) legends and were about real people or events. The brothers meant it as a scholarly work, but the historical legends were often taken from secondary sources, interpreted, modified, and rewritten—resulting in works "that were regarded as trademarks". Some scholars criticized the Grimms' methodology in collecting and rewriting the legends, yet conceptually they set an example for legend collections that was followed by others throughout Europe. Unlike the collection of folk tales, Deutsche Sagen sold poorly, but Zipes says that the collection, translated to French and Danish in the 19th century but not to English until 1981, is a "vital source for folklorists and critics alike".

Less well known in the English-speaking world is the Grimms' pioneering scholarly work on a German dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, which they began in 1838. Not until 1852 did they begin publishing the dictionary in installments. The work on the dictionary was not finished in their lifetimes, because in it they gave a history and analysis of each word.

Reception and legacy

Kinder- und Hausmärchen was not an immediate bestseller, but its popularity grew with each edition. The early editions received lukewarm critical reviews, generally on the basis that the stories did not appeal to children. The brothers responded with modifications and rewrites to increase the book's market appeal to that demographic. By the 1870s the tales had increased greatly in popularity to the point that they were added to the teaching curriculum in Prussia. In the 20th century the work was second only to the Bible as the most popular book in Germany. Its sales generated a mini-industry of critiques, which analyzed the tales' folkloric content in the context of literary history, socialism, and psychological elements often along Freudian and Jungian lines.

In their research, the brothers made a science of the study of folklore (see folkloristics), generating a model of research that "launched general fieldwork in most European countries", and setting standards for research and analysis of stories and legends that made them pioneers in the field of folklore in the 19th century.

In Nazi Germany the Grimms' stories were used to foster nationalism as well as to promote antisemitic sentiments in an increasingly hostile time for Jewish people. Some examples of notable antisemitic works in the Grimms' bibliography are "The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews", "The Jews' Stone", "The Jew Among Thorns" and "The Good Bargain". "The Girl Who Was Killed by Jews" and "The Jews' Stone" tell stories of blood libel by Jews against innocent children. In both stories the children are violently killed and mutilated. The myth of blood libel was widely propagated during the Middle Ages and is still used to vilify Jews today. The children in these two stories are acquired in exchange for large sums of money; Jewish wealth and greed are also common antisemitic tropes. These tropes appear in "The Jew Among Thorns" and "The Good Bargain". In both stories a Jewish man is depicted as deceitful for the sake of money. In the former the man admits to stealing money and is executed instead of the protagonist. In the latter, the Jewish man is found to be deceitful in order to be rewarded with a sum of money. The specific deceit is irrelevant and here too the protagonist triumphs over the Jew. All these stories paint Jews as antagonists whether through murderous rites, deceit, or greed. Antisemitism in folklore has contributed to the popularization of antisemitic tropes and misconceptions about the Jewish faith, but the Nazi Party was particularly devoted to the Grimms' collected stories. According to author Elizabeth Dalton, "Nazi ideologues enshrined the Kinder- und Hausmärchen as virtually a sacred text". The Nazi Party decreed that every household should own a copy of Kinder- und Hausmärchen; later, officials of Allied-occupied Germany banned the book for a period.

In the United States the 1937 release of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs shows the triumph of good over evil, innocence over oppression, according to Zipes. The Grimms' tales have provided much of the early foundation on which Disney built an empire. In film, the Cinderella motif, the story of a poor girl finding love and success, has been repeated in movies such as Pretty Woman, Ever After, Maid in Manhattan, and Ella Enchanted.

20th-century educators debated the value and influence of teaching stories that include brutality and violence, and some of the more gruesome details were sanitized. Dégh writes that some educators, in the belief that children should be shielded from cruelty of any form, believe that stories with a happy ending are fine to teach, whereas those that are darker, particularly the legends, might pose more harm. On the other hand, some educators and psychologists believe that children easily discern the difference between what is a story and what is not and that the tales continue to have value for children. The publication of Bruno Bettelheim's 1976 The Uses of Enchantment brought a new wave of interest in the stories as children's literature, with an emphasis on the "therapeutic value for children". More popular stories, such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Riding Hood", have become staples of modern childhood, presented in coloring books, puppet shows, and cartoons. Other stories have been considered too gruesome and have not made a popular transition.

Regardless, the Grimms' stories continue to be popular around the world, although a recent study in England appears to suggest that parents consider the stories overly violent and inappropriate for young children.

Nevertheless, children remain enamored of the Grimms' fairy tales with the brothers themselves embraced as the creators of the stories and even as part of the stories themselves. The film Brothers Grimm imagines them as con artists exploiting superstitious German peasants until they are asked to confront a genuine fairy-tale curse that calls them to finally be heroes. The movie Ever After shows the Grimms in their role as collectors of fairy tales, though they learn to their surprise that at least one of their stories (Cinderella) is true. Grimm follows a detective who discovers that he is a Grimm, the latest in a line of guardians who are sworn to keep the balance between humanity and mythological creatures. Ever After High imagines Grimm Brothers (here called Milton and Giles) as the headmasters of the Ever After High boarding school, where they train the children of the previous generation of fairy tales to follow in their parents' footsteps. In the 10th Kingdom miniseries, the brothers are trapped for years in the fairy-tale world on the 9 Kingdoms, where they witnessed the events that they would record as stories upon finally making it back to the real world. The Sisters Grimm book series follows their descendants, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm, as they adapt to life in Ferryport Landing, a town in upstate New York populated by fairy-tale people. Separate from the previous series is the Land of Stories book series which also features the idea of "Sisters Grimm." In The Land of Stories, the Grimm Brothers' female descendants are a self-described coven determined to track down and document creatures from the fairy-tale world that cross over to the real world. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were, in fact, chosen by Mother Goose and others to tell fairy tales so that they might give hope to the human race.

The university library at the Humboldt University of Berlin is housed in the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center (Jakob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum); among its collections is a large portion of the Grimms' private library.

Collaborative works

 * Die beiden ältesten deutschen Gedichte aus dem achten Jahrhundert: Das Lied von Hildebrand und Hadubrand und das Weißenbrunner Gebet, (The Two Oldest German Poems of the Eighth Century: The Song of Hildebrand and Hadubrand and the Wessobrunn Prayer)—ninth century heroic song, published 1812
 * Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales)—seven editions, between 1812 and 1857
 * Altdeutsche Wälder (Old German Forests)—three volumes between 1813 and 1816
 * Der arme Heinrich von Hartmann von der Aue (Poor Heinrich by Hartmann von der Aue)—1815
 * Lieder der alten Edda (Songs from the Elder Edda)—1815
 * Deutsche Sagen (German Sagas)—published in two parts between 1816 and 1818
 * Irische Elfenmärchen—Grimms' translation of Thomas Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, 1826
 * Deutsches Wörterbuch (German Dictionary)—32 volumes published between 1852 and 1960

Popular adaptations
The below includes adaptations from the work of the Brothers Grimm:

 * Avengers Grimm, 2015 American film
 * Grimm, 2011 fantasy crime television series about a Grimm descendant
 * Once Upon a Time, American television series
 * The 10th Kingdom, 2000 American television miniseries
 * The Brothers Grimm, 2005 film starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger
 * Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, 1989 Japanese anime anthology series by Nippon Animation
 * The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, 1962 film starring Lawrence Harvey and Walter Slezak
 * Simsala Grimm, children television series
 * A Tale Dark & Grimm, children's book by Adam Gidwitz
 * The Family Guy episode entitled "Grimm Job" (Season 12, Episode 10), sees the show's characters take on roles in three Grimm Brothers fairy tales: "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Cinderella", and "Little Red Riding Hood".
 * The Grimm Variations, 2024 Netflix anime series featuring retellings of six of the Grimm Brothers tales.

title: Brothers Grimm


text:
Wilhelm Grimm

Wilhelm Carl Grimm (also Karl; 24 February 1786 – 16 December 1859) was a German author and anthropologist. He was the younger brother of Jacob Grimm, of the literary duo the Brothers Grimm.

Life and work
Wilhelm was born in February 1786 in Hanau, in Hesse-Kassel. In 1803, he started studying law at the University of Marburg, one year after his brother Jacob started there. The two brothers spent their entire lives close together. In their school days, they had one bed and one table in common; as students, they had two beds and two tables in the same room. They always lived under one roof and had their books and property in common. In 1825, 39-year-old Wilhelm married pharmacist's daughter Henriette Dorothea Wild, also known as Dortchen. Wilhelm's marriage did not change the harmony of the brothers. Richard Cleasby visited the brothers and observed, "they both live in the same house, and in such harmony and community that one might almost imagine the children were common property."

Wilhelm's character was a complete contrast to that of his brother. As a boy, he was strong and healthy, but while growing up he suffered a long and severe illness which left him weak the rest of his life. He had a less comprehensive and energetic mind than his brother, and he had less of the spirit of investigation, preferring to confine himself to some limited and definitely bounded field of work. He utilized everything that bore directly on his own studies and ignored the rest. These studies were almost always of a literary nature.

Wilhelm took great delight in music, for which his brother had but a moderate liking, and he had a remarkable gift of story-telling. Cleasby relates that "Wilhelm read a sort of farce written in the Frankfort dialect, depicting the 'malheurs' of a rich Frankfort tradesman on a holiday jaunt on Sunday. It was very droll, and he read it admirably." Cleasby describes him as "an uncommonly animated, jovial fellow." He was, accordingly, much sought in society, which he frequented much more than his brother.

A collection of fairy tales was first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, known in English as Grimms' Fairy Tales.

From 1837 to 1841, the Grimm brothers joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to form a group known as the Göttinger Sieben (The Göttingen Seven). They protested against Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, whom they accused of violating the constitution. All seven were fired by the king.

Wilhelm Grimm died in Berlin of an infection at the age of 73 on December 16, 1859.

Children
Wilhelm and Henriette had four children together:
 * Jacob (3 April 1826 – 15 December 1826)
 * Herman Friedrich (6 January 1828 – 16 June 1901), also a noted writer
 * Rudolf Georg (31 March 1830 – 13 November 1889)
 * Barbara Auguste Luise Pauline Marie (21 August 1832 – 9 February 1919)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wilhelm Grimm


text:
Franco Rasetti

Franco Dino Rasetti (August 10, 1901 – December 5, 2001) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist, paleontologist and botanist. Together with Enrico Fermi, he discovered key processes leading to nuclear fission. Rasetti refused to work on the Manhattan Project on moral grounds.

Life and career
Rasetti was born in Castiglione del Lago, Italy. He earned a Laurea in physics at the University of Pisa in 1923, and Fermi invited him to join his research group at the University of Rome.

In 1928-1929 during a stay at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), he carried out experiments on the Raman effect. He measured a spectrum of dinitrogen in 1929 which provided the first experimental evidence that the atomic nucleus is not composed of protons and electrons, as was incorrectly believed at the time.

In 1930, he was appointed to the chair in spectroscopy at the Physics Institute of the University of Rome, at that time still located in Via Panisperna. His colleagues included Oscar D'Agostino, Emilio Segrè, Edoardo Amaldi, Ettore Majorana and Enrico Fermi, as well as the institute's director Orso Mario Corbino. Rasetti remained in this position until 1938.

Rasetti was one of Fermi's main collaborators in the study of neutrons and neutron-induced radioactivity. In 1934, he participated in the discovery of the artificial radioactivity of fluorine and aluminium which would be critical in the development of the atomic bomb.

In 1939 the advance of fascism and the deteriorating Italian political situation led him to leave Italy, following the example of his colleagues Fermi, Segré and Bruno Pontecorvo. With Fermi he had discovered the key to nuclear fission, but unlike many of his colleagues, he refused for moral reasons to work on the Manhattan project.

From 1939 to 1947, he taught at Laval University in Quebec City (Canada), where he was founding chairman of the physics department.

In 1947, he moved to the United States where he became a naturalized citizen in 1952. Until 1967, he held a chair in physics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

From the 1950s onward, he gradually shifted his commitment to naturalistic studies, which had been his great interest outside of physics already as a child. He devoted himself to geology, paleontology, entomology, and botany, becoming one of the most authoritative scholars of the Cambrian geological era.

He died in Waremme, Belgium at the age of 100. The Nature obituary noted that Rasetti was one of the most prolific generalists whose work and writing are noted for the elegance, simplicity and beauty.

Raman spectroscopy and the model of the atomic nucleus
After the discovery of Raman scattering by organic liquids, Rasetti decided to study the same phenomenon in gases at high pressure during his stay at Caltech in 1928–29. The spectra showed vibrational transitions with rotational fine structure. In the homonuclear diatomic molecules H2, N2 and O2, Rasetti found an alternation of strong and weak lines. This alternation was explained by Gerhard Herzberg and Walter Heitler as a consequence of nuclear spin isomerism.

For dihydrogen, each nucleus is a proton of spin 1/2, so that it can be shown using quantum mechanics and the Pauli exclusion principle that the odd rotational levels are more populated than the even levels. The transitions originating from odd levels are therefore more intense as observed by Rasetti. In dinitrogen, however, Rasetti observed that the lines originating from even levels are more intense. This implies by a similar analysis that the nuclear spin of nitrogen is an integer.

This result was difficult to understand at the time, however, because the neutron had not yet been discovered, and it was thought that the 14N nucleus contains 14 protons and 7 electrons, or an odd number (21) of particles in total which would correspond to a half-integral spin. The Raman spectrum observed by Rasetti provided the first experimental evidence that this proton-electron model of the nucleus is inadequate, because the predicted half-integral spin has as a consequence that transitions from odd rotational levels would be more intense than those from even levels, due to nuclear spin isomerism as shown by Herzberg and Heitler for dihydrogen. After the discovery of the neutron in 1932, Werner Heisenberg proposed that the nucleus contains protons and neutrons, and the 14N nucleus contains 7 protons and 7 neutrons. The even total number (14) of particles corresponds to an integral spin in agreement with Rasetti's spectrum.

He is also credited with the first example of electronic (as opposed to vibronic) Raman scattering in nitric oxide.

Awards

 * In 1952 he was awarded the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal by the National Academy of Sciences for his contributions to Cambrian paleontology.

title: Franco Rasetti


text:
The Buggles

The Buggles are an English new wave band formed in London in 1977 by singer and bassist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes. They are best known for their 1979 debut single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which topped the UK Singles Chart and reached number one in 15 other countries and was chosen as the song to launch MTV in 1981.

The duo released their first album, The Age of Plastic, in January 1980. On 7 September 1979 "Video Killed the Radio Star" was released, being the lead single of the album. Soon after the album's release, Horn and Downes joined the progressive rock band Yes, recording and releasing Drama in the process. Following a tour to promote the album, Yes disbanded in 1981. That same year, on 1 August, the music video for "Video Killed the Radio Star" became the first ever shown on MTV in the United States. The following year, the Buggles released a second album, Adventures in Modern Recording. Its lack of commercial success led to the breakup of the group.

Since 1998, Horn and Downes have occasionally performed the Buggles' songs. The band had its debut tour in 2023 in a lineup with Horn, but without Downes.

1977–1979: Formation
Downes claimed the group's name derived as a pun on the rock band the Beatles, saying: "It was originally called the Bugs ... studio insects—imaginary creatures who lived in recording studios creating havoc. Then somebody said as a joke that the Bugs would never be as big as the Beatles. So we changed it to the Buggles." Horn later spoke of its name: "I know the name's awful, but at the time it was the era of the great punk thing. I'd got fed up of producing people who were generally idiots but called themselves all sorts of clever names like the Unwanted, the Unwashed, the Unheard ... when it came to choosing our name I thought I'd pick the most disgusting name possible. In retrospect I have frequently regretted calling myself Buggles, but in those days I never really thought much about packaging or selling myself, all that really concerned me was the record."

Horn began his career producing jingles and punk rock groups. Downes was a keyboardist in She's French and graduated from Leeds College of Music in 1975, after which he moved to London looking for keyboard work. The two first met in 1976 at auditions for Tina Charles' backing band and worked with her producer, Biddu, whose backing tracks had an influence on their early work as the Buggles. Horn met musician Bruce Woolley while playing the bass guitar in the house band at the Hammersmith Odeon. Both expressed an interest in Kraftwerk and Daniel Miller, leading them to read Crash by J. G. Ballard. Said Horn, "We had this idea that at some future point there'd be a record label that didn't really have any artists—just a computer in the basement and some mad Vincent Price-like figure making the records ... One of the groups this computer would make would be the Buggles, which was obviously a corruption of the Beatles, who would just be this inconsequential bunch of people with a hit song that the computer had written ... and would never be seen."

In 1977, Horn, Downes and Woolley got together and began recording a selection of demos in a small room above a stonemason shop in Wimbledon, southwest London, including "Video Killed the Radio Star", "Clean, Clean" and "On TV". Though unsure about what they wished to do with the demos, Downes remembered that "we knew even then ... there was some distant goal that had to be reached", and proceeded to re-record the songs at a 16-track recording studio in north London. Initial searches for the right record label to record and release an album failed,  but Horn, having begun a relationship with Jill Sinclair, a co-founder of Sarm East Studios, managed to secure plans for a potential deal. However, the demo version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" caught the attention of producer Chris Blackwell of Island Records and, on the day on which Horn and Downes were due to sign with Sarm East, Blackwell offered them a more lucrative deal, which they accepted. Downes claimed Island rejected them three times before a final deal was agreed upon.

1979–1980: The Age of Plastic
With the Island recording contract having been secured, the Buggles recorded their debut studio album, The Age of Plastic, through 1979. Initially, the demo of "Video Killed the Radio Star" featured vocals by Tina Charles, who also helped fund the project. Although the song was primarily a Woolley composition, he ended his association with Horn and Downes to form the Camera Club before the song's release as a single. Making The Age of Plastic involved several months of tiresome and intense experimentation with studio equipment and techniques, struggling to capture the "magic" of the original demos. Debi Doss and Linda Jardim-Allan, the female voices on "Video Killed the Radio Star", contributed their vocals to other songs on the album as well.

"Video Killed the Radio Star", the album's lead single, was released first in September 1979 to considerable commercial success, topping the chart in 16 countries. Its music video, directed by Russell Mulcahy, was the first aired on MTV in the United States on 1 August 1981. Film composer Hans Zimmer makes a brief appearance in the video. The Age of Plastic was released in January 1980 and reached No. 27 on the UK Albums Chart. Three subsequent singles were released: "Living in the Plastic Age", "Clean, Clean" and "Elstree", all of which charted in the United Kingdom.

1980–1981: Collaboration with Yes
In early 1980, Horn and Downes began work on a second Buggles album in London, working in a studio next door to that of the progressive rock band Yes, who had lost vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman following failed recording sessions for a potential new album. In particular, Horn had been a long-standing fan of Yes. The Buggles offered a song to Yes, "We Can Fly from Here", but at the suggestion of Brian Lane, manager of both bands, Yes' bassist Chris Squire invited them to actually replace Anderson and Wakeman as members of Yes. Horn and Downes accepted the offer and joined Squire, Steve Howe and Alan White to record Drama.

The absorption of the Buggles into Yes met with mixed reactions; the band was sometimes booed in the United Kingdom despite its chart position, but not in the United States. Horn admitted that he did not have Anderson's vocal range or style, which many fans missed, but most were still willing to give the new incarnation of Yes a chance. However, some press critics and fans were far less forgiving, especially in the United Kingdom. The US tour was much less financially successful than expected, and Yes disbanded in December 1980 after the Drama tour ended.

1981–1982: Adventures in Modern Recording
In early 1981, following the disbanding of Yes, Downes and Horn reconvened at Sarm East Studios to record the Buggles' second studio album, Adventures in Modern Recording. However, Downes left the group on the day that the recording was to begin to help form Asia with Howe, citing musical differences. Horn was angry that Island Records renegotiated publishing terms for Downes to join Asia, but never did for Horn since, in his words, he was "washed up, career-wise." To fix this problem, Jill Sinclair made a deal with the French label Carrere, whose leader Claude Carrere, whom Horn described as a "very nice man", helped fund the album. Horn was now left to complete much of the album with several additional personnel.

Released in November 1981, Adventures in Modern Recording involved Horn's experimentation with numerous production techniques, especially with the heavy use of sampling with the Fairlight CMI, with instruments from the computer such as the drums on "Inner City" and the big band jazz sounds on "Vermillion Sands". These same sampling techniques would later be used in records that he produced, such as Slave to the Rhythm by Grace Jones, 90125 by Yes, The Seduction of Claude Debussy by Art of Noise, and Welcome to the Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. While the album garnered little attention in the United Kingdom, Horn recalled in 2010 that it was a commercial success in France, and in the United States the album peaked at number 161 on the American Billboard 200. By the time of the album's release, when Horn was also producing the album The Lexicon of Love by ABC, he decided to take Sinclair's advice that he was always meant to be a producer rather than a performer or songwriter; thus the performance of "Lenny" on a Dutch television show, with ABC as the backing band, marked the end of the Buggles. As Horn recalled when he was interviewed after the show: "'I'll never forget it because the guy said to me, 'well, things are not looking so good for you', and I said 'how do you mean?' And he said 'well, you know, your first record was a big hit now this record is number eleven, so your career is going downhill'. And I said 'well you know what? You see these guys, this is a band called ABC and I'm a producer now I don't really care about this stuff, I'm just doing it to promote the record. And I may be on the skids as an artist but things are looking up in other areas. End of interview. Fuck off.''"

1998–present: Reunion performances
Being largely a studio creation, the Buggles never toured. There were some Top of the Pops playback appearances, and later some performances for promotional purposes in support of the second album, but the first live outing by the original duo came in a low-key appearance on 3 December 1998 at a showcase for new bands on Horn's ZTT Records label at Mean Fiddler in northwest London. During this appearance, the Buggles played only "Video Killed the Radio Star", backed by singer Tessa Niles and one of the other groups on the bill, the Marbles.

On 11 November 2004, the Buggles reunited with Doss, Jardim, Allan and Woolley at Wembley Arena to perform "Video Killed the Radio Star" and "The Plastic Age" as part of a The Prince's Trust charity concert celebrating Horn's career as a producer.

On 28 September 2010, the Buggles performed their first actual concert, billed as "The Lost Gig", at Supperclub in Notting Hill, west London, as a fundraiser for the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. Following an opening performance by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Buggles' set included The Age of Plastic performed in its entirety, including Woolley singing with Horn on "Clean, Clean". Also featured were Lol Creme, Chris Braide, Alison Moyet, Gary Barlow, Richard O'Brien and Claudia Brücken.

On 25 October 2011, the Buggles reunited to play at the British Music Experience at the O2 Arena. The gig included the first live performance of "I Am a Camera" and covers of "Space Oddity" by David Bowie and "Check It Out" by Nicki Minaj and will.i.am, which utilised samples from "Video Killed the Radio Star". Kirsten Joy, Holly Petrie and Kate Westall provided backup vocals.

In 2013, Downes spoke of the chance of another reunion: "It's always a challenge working on new stuff, and I'd love to collaborate with Trevor again ... it's not impossibility, just a matter of making the planets align so that one day we can hopefully make it happen." In March 2015, Downes joined the Trevor Horn Band on stage at the Shepherd's Bush Empire to play "The Plastic Age" and "Video Killed the Radio Star". Horn and Downes reunited in the studio in early 2016 for more Buggles activity.

During April–June 2023, the Buggles were the support act for Seal during his 30th anniversary tour, on which Horn was the musical director and bassist. This marked the group's first tour. The line up was the same as Seal's backing band, led by Horn. Geoff Downes was not involved. The set list included songs from both the band's albums and material by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Yes.

Artistry and reception
Many of the lyrics Trevor Horn wrote were inspired by sci-fi works by writers such as J. G. Ballard. According to Geoff Downes; "'The whole idea of the Buggles was the use of technology in an art form. Hence, we tried to use synthesizers, studio gadgets, etc. to create these fake effects to parallel conventional music. The Polythene Symphonia at the end of Video Killed the Radio Star is one example. Our contributions to the Drama album were an extension of this in many ways.'" Downes claims to have used George Shearing's "technique of doubling melody lines in block chords (using the 5th note)... quite extensively on some of the Buggles' recordings".

Both of the Buggles' albums have received positive reception from music critics. The Trouser Press called both albums "technically stunning, reasonably catchy and crashingly hollow," while AllMusic's Jeri Montesano said that, compared to 1990s pop music, they "still sound fresh".

Legacy
After leaving the Buggles, Downes joined his former Yes bandmate Steve Howe in forming the aforementioned supergroup Asia, together with John Wetton (formerly from King Crimson) and Carl Palmer (formerly from Emerson, Lake & Palmer), which made its name with the 1982 hit single "Heat of the Moment". Downes remains a member of Asia today. Parallel to Asia, he also worked on other projects, including several solo albums and production of acts such as GTR. In 2011, Downes rejoined Yes as their keyboardist, working once again alongside Horn on the album Fly from Here and accompanying tour.

Horn embarked on a highly successful career as a record producer, achieving success with the bands ABC, Dollar, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Art of Noise, and even the albums 90125 and Big Generator from a re-formed Yes, with Jon Anderson back on vocals. In 1985, Horn won the Best Producer BRIT Award. More than twenty years on, he is still active, producing with Seal, Tina Turner, Paul McCartney, Tom Jones, Cher, Simple Minds, Belle and Sebastian, t.A.T.u., Charlotte Church, Captain, Pet Shop Boys and Robbie Williams among his many credits. He is currently working with his new band, the Producers, who released the album Made in Basing Street (2012).

Both Asia and Producers have played "Video Killed the Radio Star" as part of their live set in tribute to their members' origins in the Buggles.

In 2009, Horn produced the album Reality Killed the Video Star for British singer Robbie Williams. The album title pays homage to the trademark Buggles song, and Horn performed the song with Williams (Horn on bass and Williams on vocals) at the BBC Electric Proms on 20 October 2009.

Following 2010 discussions with Chris Squire, Horn produced the Yes album Fly from Here (2011), the bulk of whose forty-seven-minute duration comprises unused or incomplete Buggles material from the early 1980s (particularly "We Can Fly from Here"), reminiscent of the use of the Buggles' I am a Camera for "Into the Lens" on Drama during their first stint in 1980. He thus insisted that Downes play keyboards on the album (replacing Oliver Wakeman, son of Rick Wakeman) and Horn himself played and sang backing vocals on the album. The album's group photograph prominently features Horn standing centre, signifying that to all intents he was considered the sixth band member for the recording. The Fly From Here tour did not feature Horn.

In February 2017, Bruce Woolley and his band the Radio Science Orchestra, released a new, dark ambient version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" with singer Polly Scattergood on vocals. The single was released on Gramophone Records, along with a music video featuring musician and producer Thomas Dolby and Wolfgang Wild of Retronaut fame.

The Robot Sings
On 8 March 2017, Horn posted an announcement on his official Facebook page, linking to an article on theatre website Broadway World that Horn, Downes and Woolley were working together on a musical provisionally entitled The Robot Sings. Based on The Tempest by William Shakespeare, and taking influence from sci-fi authors such as J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss and Isaac Asimov, the stage show was to tell the story of a boy called Jay trying to save his robot companion. The musical was to feature "Video Killed the Radio Star" as well as new compositions by Downes, and the script was to be written by Jack Woolley.

Members

 * Trevor Horn – lead vocals, bass, guitar, sound effects (1977–1982, 1998, 2004, 2010, 2011, 2023)
 * Geoff Downes – piano, keyboards, synthesisers, drums, percussion, backing vocals (1977–1981, 1998, 2004, 2010, 2011)
 * Bruce Woolley (1977–1979)
 * Debi Doss – backing vocals (1979, 2004)
 * Linda Jardim-Allen – backing vocals (1979, 2004; deceased)
 * Earl Harvin – drums (2023 touring)
 * Mat Dauzat – guitar (2023 touring)
 * Jamie Muhoberac – keyboards (2023 touring)
 * La Tanya Hall – backing vocals (2023 touring)
 * Everett Bradley – backing vocals, percussion (2023 touring)

Discography

 * Studio albums
 * The Age of Plastic (1979)
 * Adventures in Modern Recording (1981)

title: The Buggles


text:
Bernhard Riemann

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann ( 17 September 1826 – 20 July 1866) was a German mathematician who made profound contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the Riemann integral, and his work on Fourier series. His contributions to complex analysis include most notably the introduction of Riemann surfaces, breaking new ground in a natural, geometric treatment of complex analysis. His 1859 paper on the prime-counting function, containing the original statement of the Riemann hypothesis, is regarded as a foundational paper of analytic number theory. Through his pioneering contributions to differential geometry, Riemann laid the foundations of the mathematics of general relativity. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.

Early years
Riemann was born on 17 September 1826 in Breselenz, a village near Dannenberg in the Kingdom of Hanover. His father, Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, was a poor Lutheran pastor in Breselenz who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. His mother, Charlotte Ebell, died in 1846. Riemann was the second of six children, shy and suffering from numerous nervous breakdowns. Riemann exhibited exceptional mathematical talent, such as calculation abilities, from an early age but suffered from timidity and a fear of speaking in public.

Education
During 1840, Riemann went to Hanover to live with his grandmother and attend lyceum (middle school years), because such a type of school was not accessible from his home village. After the death of his grandmother in 1842, he transferred to the Johanneum Lüneburg, a high school in Lüneburg. There, Riemann studied the Bible intensively, but he was often distracted by mathematics. His teachers were amazed by his ability to perform complicated mathematical operations, in which he often outstripped his instructor's knowledge. In 1846, at the age of 19, he started studying philology and Christian theology in order to become a pastor and help with his family's finances.

During the spring of 1846, his father, after gathering enough money, sent Riemann to the University of Göttingen, where he planned to study towards a degree in theology. However, once there, he began studying mathematics under Carl Friedrich Gauss (specifically his lectures on the method of least squares). Gauss recommended that Riemann give up his theological work and enter the mathematical field; after getting his father's approval, Riemann transferred to the University of Berlin in 1847. During his time of study, Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, Jakob Steiner, and Gotthold Eisenstein were teaching. He stayed in Berlin for two years and returned to Göttingen in 1849.

Academia
Riemann held his first lectures in 1854, which founded the field of Riemannian geometry and thereby set the stage for Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. In 1857, there was an attempt to promote Riemann to extraordinary professor status at the University of Göttingen. Although this attempt failed, it did result in Riemann finally being granted a regular salary. In 1859, following the death of Dirichlet (who held Gauss's chair at the University of Göttingen), he was promoted to head the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen. He was also the first to suggest using dimensions higher than merely three or four in order to describe physical reality.

In 1862 he married Elise Koch; their daughter Ida Schilling was born on 22 December 1862.

Protestant family and death in Italy
Riemann fled Göttingen when the armies of Hanover and Prussia clashed there in 1866. He died of tuberculosis during his third journey to Italy in Selasca (now a hamlet of Verbania on Lake Maggiore), where he was buried in the cemetery in Biganzolo (Verbania).

Riemann was a dedicated Christian, the son of a Protestant minister, and saw his life as a mathematician as another way to serve God. During his life, he held closely to his Christian faith and considered it to be the most important aspect of his life. At the time of his death, he was reciting the Lord's Prayer with his wife and died before they finished saying the prayer. Meanwhile, in Göttingen his housekeeper discarded some of the papers in his office, including much unpublished work. Riemann refused to publish incomplete work, and some deep insights may have been lost.

Riemann's tombstone in Biganzolo (Italy) refers to :

Riemannian geometry
Riemann's published works opened up research areas combining analysis with geometry. These would subsequently become major parts of the theories of Riemannian geometry, algebraic geometry, and complex manifold theory. The theory of Riemann surfaces was elaborated by Felix Klein and particularly Adolf Hurwitz. This area of mathematics is part of the foundation of topology and is still being applied in novel ways to mathematical physics.

In 1853, Gauss asked Riemann, his student, to prepare a Habilitationsschrift on the foundations of geometry. Over many months, Riemann developed his theory of higher dimensions and delivered his lecture at Göttingen on 10 June 1854, entitled Ueber die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen. It was not published until twelve years later in 1868 by Dedekind, two years after his death. Its early reception appears to have been slow, but it is now recognized as one of the most important works in geometry.

The subject founded by this work is Riemannian geometry. Riemann found the correct way to extend into n dimensions the differential geometry of surfaces, which Gauss himself proved in his theorema egregium. The fundamental objects are called the Riemannian metric and the Riemann curvature tensor. For the surface (two-dimensional) case, the curvature at each point can be reduced to a number (scalar), with the surfaces of constant positive or negative curvature being models of the non-Euclidean geometries.

The Riemann metric is a collection of numbers at every point in space (i.e., a tensor) which allows measurements of speed in any trajectory, whose integral gives the distance between the trajectory's endpoints. For example, Riemann found that in four spatial dimensions, one needs ten numbers at each point to describe distances and curvatures on a manifold, no matter how distorted it is.

Complex analysis
In his dissertation, he established a geometric foundation for complex analysis through Riemann surfaces, through which multi-valued functions like the logarithm (with infinitely many sheets) or the square root (with two sheets) could become one-to-one functions. Complex functions are harmonic functions (that is, they satisfy Laplace's equation and thus the Cauchy–Riemann equations) on these surfaces and are described by the location of their singularities and the topology of the surfaces. The topological "genus" of the Riemann surfaces is given by $$g=w/2-n+1$$, where the surface has $$n$$ leaves coming together at $$w$$ branch points. For $$g>1$$ the Riemann surface has $$(3g-3)$$ parameters (the "moduli").

His contributions to this area are numerous. The famous Riemann mapping theorem says that a simply connected domain in the complex plane is "biholomorphically equivalent" (i.e. there is a bijection between them that is holomorphic with a holomorphic inverse) to either $$\mathbb{C}$$ or to the interior of the unit circle. The generalization of the theorem to Riemann surfaces is the famous uniformization theorem, which was proved in the 19th century by Henri Poincaré and Felix Klein. Here, too, rigorous proofs were first given after the development of richer mathematical tools (in this case, topology). For the proof of the existence of functions on Riemann surfaces, he used a minimality condition, which he called the Dirichlet principle. Karl Weierstrass found a gap in the proof: Riemann had not noticed that his working assumption (that the minimum existed) might not work; the function space might not be complete, and therefore the existence of a minimum was not guaranteed. Through the work of David Hilbert in the Calculus of Variations, the Dirichlet principle was finally established. Otherwise, Weierstrass was very impressed with Riemann, especially with his theory of abelian functions. When Riemann's work appeared, Weierstrass withdrew his paper from Crelle's Journal and did not publish it. They had a good understanding when Riemann visited him in Berlin in 1859. Weierstrass encouraged his student Hermann Amandus Schwarz to find alternatives to the Dirichlet principle in complex analysis, in which he was successful. An anecdote from Arnold Sommerfeld shows the difficulties which contemporary mathematicians had with Riemann's new ideas. In 1870, Weierstrass had taken Riemann's dissertation with him on a holiday to Rigi and complained that it was hard to understand. The physicist Hermann von Helmholtz assisted him in the work overnight and returned with the comment that it was "natural" and "very understandable".

Other highlights include his work on abelian functions and theta functions on Riemann surfaces. Riemann had been in a competition with Weierstrass since 1857 to solve the Jacobian inverse problems for abelian integrals, a generalization of elliptic integrals. Riemann used theta functions in several variables and reduced the problem to the determination of the zeros of these theta functions. Riemann also investigated period matrices and characterized them through the "Riemannian period relations" (symmetric, real part negative). By Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and Solomon Lefschetz the validity of this relation is equivalent with the embedding of $$\mathbb{C}^n/\Omega$$ (where $$\Omega$$ is the lattice of the period matrix) in a projective space by means of theta functions. For certain values of $$n$$, this is the Jacobian variety of the Riemann surface, an example of an abelian manifold.

Many mathematicians such as Alfred Clebsch furthered Riemann's work on algebraic curves. These theories depended on the properties of a function defined on Riemann surfaces. For example, the Riemann–Roch theorem (Roch was a student of Riemann) says something about the number of linearly independent differentials (with known conditions on the zeros and poles) of a Riemann surface.

According to Detlef Laugwitz, automorphic functions appeared for the first time in an essay about the Laplace equation on electrically charged cylinders. Riemann however used such functions for conformal maps (such as mapping topological triangles to the circle) in his 1859 lecture on hypergeometric functions or in his treatise on minimal surfaces.

Real analysis
In the field of real analysis, he discovered the Riemann integral in his habilitation. Among other things, he showed that every piecewise continuous function is integrable. Similarly, the Stieltjes integral goes back to the Göttinger mathematician, and so they are named together the Riemann–Stieltjes integral.

In his habilitation work on Fourier series, where he followed the work of his teacher Dirichlet, he showed that Riemann-integrable functions are "representable" by Fourier series. Dirichlet has shown this for continuous, piecewise-differentiable functions (thus with countably many non-differentiable points). Riemann gave an example of a Fourier series representing a continuous, almost nowhere-differentiable function, a case not covered by Dirichlet. He also proved the Riemann–Lebesgue lemma: if a function is representable by a Fourier series, then the Fourier coefficients go to zero for large n.

Riemann's essay was also the starting point for Georg Cantor's work with Fourier series, which was the impetus for set theory.

He also worked with hypergeometric differential equations in 1857 using complex analytical methods and presented the solutions through the behaviour of closed paths about singularities (described by the monodromy matrix). The proof of the existence of such differential equations by previously known monodromy matrices is one of the Hilbert problems.

Number theory
Riemann made some famous contributions to modern analytic number theory. In a single short paper, the only one he published on the subject of number theory, he investigated the zeta function that now bears his name, establishing its importance for understanding the distribution of prime numbers. The Riemann hypothesis was one of a series of conjectures he made about the function's properties.

In Riemann's work, there are many more interesting developments. He proved the functional equation for the zeta function (already known to Leonhard Euler), behind which a theta function lies. Through the summation of this approximation function over the non-trivial zeros on the line with real portion 1/2, he gave an exact, "explicit formula" for $$\pi(x)$$.

Riemann knew of Pafnuty Chebyshev's work on the Prime Number Theorem. He had visited Dirichlet in 1852.

Writings
Riemann's works include:
 * 1851 – Grundlagen für eine allgemeine Theorie der Functionen einer veränderlichen complexen Grösse, Inauguraldissertation, Göttingen, 1851.
 * 1857 – Theorie der Abelschen Functionen, Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik, Bd. 54. S. 101–155.
 * 1859 – Über die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Größe, in: Monatsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin, November 1859, S. 671ff. With Riemann's conjecture. Über die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Grösse. (Wikisource), Facsimile of the manuscript with Clay Mathematics.
 * 1861 – Commentatio mathematica, qua respondere tentatur quaestioni ab Illma Academia Parisiensi propositae, submitted to the Paris Academy for a prize competition
 * 1867 – Über die Darstellbarkeit einer Function durch eine trigonometrische Reihe, Aus dem dreizehnten Bande der Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen.
 * 1868 – Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zugrunde liegen. Abh. Kgl. Ges. Wiss., Göttingen 1868. Translation EMIS, pdf On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry, translated by W.K.Clifford, Nature 8 1873 183 – reprinted in Clifford's Collected Mathematical Papers, London 1882 (MacMillan); New York 1968 (Chelsea) http://www.emis.de/classics/Riemann/. Also in Ewald, William B., ed., 1996 "From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics", 2 vols. Oxford Uni. Press: 652–61.
 * 1876 – Bernhard Riemann's Gesammelte Mathematische Werke und wissenschaftlicher Nachlass. herausgegeben von Heinrich Weber unter Mitwirkung von Richard Dedekind, Leipzig, B. G. Teubner 1876, 2. Auflage 1892, Nachdruck bei Dover 1953 (with contributions by Max Noether and Wilhelm Wirtinger, Teubner 1902). Later editions The collected Works of Bernhard Riemann: The Complete German Texts. Eds. Heinrich Weber; Richard Dedekind; M Noether; Wilhelm Wirtinger; Hans Lewy. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1953, 1981, 2017
 * 1876 – Schwere, Elektrizität und Magnetismus, Hannover: Karl Hattendorff.
 * 1882 – Vorlesungen über Partielle Differentialgleichungen 3. Auflage. Braunschweig 1882.
 * 1901 – Die partiellen Differential-Gleichungen der mathematischen Physik nach Riemann's Vorlesungen. PDF on Wikimedia Commons. On archive.org:
 * 2004 –

title: Bernhard Riemann


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Talk:Optimizing compiler

POV? humans
"good compilers can often generate better code than human programmers" is a blatant POV. For one, my POV, as a person which way too often looks at assembly output of compilers, is opposite - even "good" compilers often produce visibly suboptimal code, whereas "mediocre" ones emit outright atrocious contraptions. 89.103.73.49 (talk) 16:34, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree and have removed those POV statements. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:16, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Something still missing
dynamic compilation, feedback based optimization, procedural abstraction (and other code-size optimizations generally)

compiler optimzation vs. optimizing compiler
Wouldn't it be better to discuss this material under optimizing compiler, which is a term in common use? --Robert Merkel

This page is very well written and informative, kudos to the persons who wrote it. And compiler optimization is the correct term. --BL

My modifications
A real good page, quite informative.Gave me all the info required for my project.My thanks to the writer.[alpha geek] -- I've tried to organize and expand this page in a lot of ways. I think compiler optimizations are a very deep field, and each optimization, or at least the more complex ones, deserve their own page giving examples, details, and a full explanation of the algorithm. Look for red links, try to help!

Deco

I think the definition, "Compiler optimization techniques are optimization techniques that have been programmed into a compiler," is rather tautologous. --Random reader

Excellent page on compiler optimization with good links to external pages. Very useful in understanding the concepts. More pointers on how to look at the assembly code from gcc and how to interpret the optimization will be hepful. More external links could also be helpful.

Very good article
I think with a little review and touching up this article could become featured. --24.239.174.223 22:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Definition
I think the definition of compiler optimization can do with some work as its a little disjoint. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.173.82 (talk) 09:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

SCCP is greater than the sum of its parts
I've corrected the description of sparse conditional constant propagation (SCCP), which claimed that it's equivalent to iteration of constant propagation, constant folding, and dead-code elimination. In fact, it's more powerful, as the linked Wegman & Zadeck paper shows :

“Many optimizing compilers repeatedly execute constant propagation and unreachable code elimination since each provides information that improves the other. CC solves this problem in an elegant way by combining the two optimizations. Additionally, the algorithm gets better results than are possible by repeated applications of the separate algorithms, as described in Section 5.1.”

(CC is conditional constant propagation, which the authors made “sparse” using SSA.)

Essentially, what can happen is that value A is constant only because block B is dead, but B is dead only because A is constant. Since dataflow and control flow interact, analyzing them in isolation is less informative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luke Maurer (talk • contribs) 02:18, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

To what stack is "stack-height reduction" referring?
It's described as "[rearranging the] expression tree to minimize resources needed for expression evaluation"; is this referring to the Sethi–Ullman algorithm? If so, whilst, as I remember from a paper I read a long time ago but have been unable to find, you can use that algorithm to generate code that reduces evaluation stack depth on stack machines, but it also can reduce the number of registers used on non-stack machines. (Note that stack (computer science) points to on the stack disambiguation page. Guy Harris (talk) 19:54, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Why does this article exist?
This is yet another case of a notable thing with an adjective in front of it. And, what compiler doesn't do optimization? This article should be rolled into a section of compiler.

How does such a topic get approved for a new article? I tried to add something real and it was rejected. Very inconsistent policy for adding new articles.

Or ... This article touches on optimization outside of the compiler. So, maybe this article is or should be about optimization in general; not just how compilers optimize; named like Optimization (software) ... Just found program optimization which seems a better place for all of this article's content. ... but program optimization is a case of WP inventing a term as well as notable-thing-with-adjective-in-front. I think the article should be Optimization (something). Stevebroshar (talk) 14:07, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And, what compiler doesn't do optimization? What compiler doesn't do code generation? Nevertheless, there's a code generation (compiler) article.
 * maybe this article is or should be about optimization in general "Optimization" is a term that's used for different things in different consequences. See, for example, mathematical optimization, engineering optimization (which is just a list of further subtopics, some with pages of their own), process optimization, product optimization, search engine optimization, and supply chain optimization. Optimization (disambiguation) has a hatnote suggesting that "optimization" is a broad concept and should have an article about it; I'm not certain that, to quote Broad-concept article, it's "a broad concept or type of thing that is capable of being described in an article", but the hatnote was put up on 2024-04-23, so let's see how long it takes for somebody to give it a try.
 * However, that doesn't mean that optimizing compiler should be that article, as that article would have to incorporate all of those different forms of optimization, and would probably become a huge sprawl.
 * Just found program optimization which seems a better place for all of this article's content That page covers several forms of optimization, most done at levels other than those done by a compiler, with a short section "Compile level" that links to this page; I guess you could stuff this entire page into, but that might result in an overlong section.
 * I think the article should be Optimization (something) How about "optimization (compiler)", as per code generation (compiler)? Guy Harris (talk) 18:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Good stuff. ... I think code generation (compiler) is a relatively good article name. Not sure it deserves to be separate from compiler, but at least code generation is a real term; not just a notable-term-with-an-adjective-in-front (NTWAAIF). ... not _that_ general :) I mean WRT software. I think program optimization is a good topic but not a good article name; it's a NTWAAIF. I think it should be Optimization (computer program). ... Thing is, some of the things in this article (optimizing compiler) are not about the compiler :) Link-time optimizations are about the linker, right? I think it's artificial to separate (computer program) optimizations by tool. I agree with your idea to move the content of this article into program optimization. I think there's a lot of fluff in this article. I think the content can be reduced significantly so that the combined article is not too long/unwieldly. For instance, many of the optimizations have their own articles and so don't need to be explained here, again. What is currently pages of info could be a list of links. Stevebroshar (talk) 03:00, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Not sure it deserves to be separate from compiler Compilers, especially ones with sophisticated optimizers and code generators, are large programs, and stuffing everything there is to know about how a compiler works would probably result in a very long and unwieldy article.
 * I agree with your idea to move the content of this article into program optimization. Even the part where I say "but that might result in an overlong section"? I'm saying it could be done, not that it should be done.  I suspect keeping this article, along with code generation (compiler), and perhaps even moving the computer-language parts (plural, as in "all sections from  to ") of parsing into a separate article, might be the right idea. Guy Harris (talk) 06:25, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Optimizing compiler