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Death, seeing that he had been cheated out of his property for a second time, approached the
physician with long strides and said, "You are finished. Now it is your turn."
Then Death seized him so firmly with his ice-cold hand that he could not resist, and led him into
an underground cavern. There the physician saw how thousands and thousands of candles were
burning in endless rows, some large, others medium-sized, others small. Every instant some died
out, and others were relit, so that the little flames seemed to be jumping about in constant
change.
"See," said Death, "these are the life-lights of mankind. The large ones belong to children, the
medium-sized ones to married people in their best years, and the little ones to old people.
However, even children and young people often have only a tiny candle."
"Show me my life-light," said the physician, thinking that it still would be very large.
Death pointed to a little stump that was just threatening to go out, and said, "See, there it is."
"Oh, dear godfather," said the horrified physician, "light a new one for me. Do it as a favor to
me, so that I can enjoy my life, and become king and the husband of the beautiful princess."
"I cannot," answered Death. "One must go out before a new one is lighted."
"Then set the old one onto a new one that will go on burning after the old one is finished,"
begged the physician.
Death pretended that he was going to fulfill this wish and took hold of a large new candle, but,
desiring revenge, he purposely made a mistake in relighting it, and the little piece fell down and
went out. The physician immediately fell to the ground, and he too was now in the hands of
Death.
Brothers Grimm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Brothers Grimm (or Die Brder Grimm), Jacob (17851863) and Wilhelm Grimm (17861859),
were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together
specialized in collecting and publishing folklore during the 19th century. They were among the bestknown storytellers of folk tales, and popularized stories such as "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel"), "The
Frog Prince" ("Der Froschknig"), "Hansel and Gretel" ("Hnsel und Gretel"), "Rapunzel",
"Rumpelstiltskin" ("Rumpelstilzchen"), and "Snow White" ("Schneewittchen"). Their first collection of
folk tales, Children's and Household Tales(Kinder- und Hausmrchen), was published in 1812. (note
that, in this case, "Jacob," is spelled "Jakob")
The brothers spent their formative years in the German town of Hanau. Their father's death in 1796
caused great poverty for the family and affected the brothers for many years after. They both
attended the University of Marburg where they developed a curiosity about German folklore, which
grew into a lifelong dedication to collecting German folk tales. The rise of romanticism during the
19th century revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the brothers represented a pure form
of national literature and culture. With the goal of researching a scholarly treatise on folk tales, 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 folk tales, the brothers
wrote collections of well-respected German and Scandinavian mythologies, and in 1838 they began
writing a definitive German dictionary (Deutsches Wrterbuch), which they were unable to finish
during their lifetime.
The popularity of the Grimms' collected folk tales has endured well. The tales are available in more
than 100 languages and have been later adapted by filmmakers including Lotte Reiniger and Walt
Disney, with films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty. In the mid-20th
century, the tales were used as propaganda by the Third Reich; later in the 20th century
psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheimreaffirmed the value of the work, in spite of the cruelty and
violence in original versions of some of the tales, which the Grimms eventually sanitized.