This essay discusses the narrative Grimms Wörter [Words of Grimm] published by Günter Grass in August 2010, just before his eighty-third birthday. Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm are his main characters, and the theme centres on the efforts of the brothers to elaborate a great dictionary of the German language, which was only completed in 1961 with the publication of the thirty-second volume. Organizing the chapters of the book (and also the narrative structure) by the letters of the alphabet, Grass makes a moving tribute to the philological work of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm and a declaration of love for the German language. He also shows that 123 years of German history are reflected in the intricate genesis of the dictionary, using important episodes in the lives of the Grimm Brothers to reconstitute the periods of his own artistic and political autobiography. Examining this fusion of trajectories, the essay highlights a passage from the chapter on the letter "D" (Däumling: Tom Thumb) to emphasize the influence that one of the best-known heroes of the Grimm Brothers had on the conception of Oskar Matzerath, the first person narrator of the novel The Tin Drum. Thus a link is established between Grimms Wörter and the novel which made the young Günter Grass world famous.
Günter Grass; Grimm Brothers; Deutsches Wörterbuch; German Language and History; Old Age; Tom Thumb; Oskar Matzerath
