Reflections of My Childhood Dreams:
Scenes from the Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales
In the early 1800s brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published a book of fairy tales that remains unrivaled to this day. It contains such indelible tales as Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hänsel and Gretel, and Cinderella. They are read today in more than 160 languages.
The two brothers, however, did not make up the tales themselves, but gathered them from a variety of storytellers across central Germany. Having grown up in the very region where the Grimm Brothers lived and worked, and having been enthralled since childhood by the setting of the tales, I returned to Germany to see if I could find reflections of my early fairy tale dreams. To my surprise I found traces of fairy tales in a series of timeless images from village life, the echoes of the past resounding from brooding castles to deep dark forests, from fire-lit cottages to crooked village streets.
