240 years ago today, January 4, 1785 (November 24, 1784 in the lunar calendar), Jacob Green was born. Brothers Grimm On January 4, 1785, Jacob Grimm, the famous German linguist and fairy tale writer, was born. He also has a brother named William Green, who is also a linguist. The two brothers are the founders of German linguistics. The "Collection of German Children and Families Fairy Tales" they collected and edited is famous all over the world. It is commonly known as "Grimm's Fairy Tales" and is a valuable asset in the world's children's literature. The Green brothers were born in Hanau on the Rhine, and their father was a minor official. Their youth was spent during Napoleon's occupation of Germany. At that time, Germany suffered from both foreign aggression and oppression by powerful feudal forces. After graduating from college, they immersed themselves in the study of history. Inspired by the folk song collection "Children's Strange Horn" co-edited by German romantic writers Arnim and Bucantano, they began to collect and organize folk fairy tales and ancient legends in 1806., and published a three-volume collection of German Children and Families Fairy Tales in 1814, 1815, and 1822. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, reactionary forces in European countries rose again, and the division of Germany remained very serious. This gave the Grimm brothers confidence that politics must be reformed. In 1837, seven famous university professors, including the Green Brothers, lost their professorships in protest against the Duke of Hanover's breach of his constitutional promise. During this period, they worked hard to combine the study of historical heritage with the people's demands for freedom, democracy, and unity. They studied the German language, compiled the German Grammar and the History of German Language, as well as the unfinished German Dictionary, which pioneered the study of Germanic linguistics and provided the demonstration that the German nation is a unified nation. In 1859, his brother William Green died, and in 1863 Jacob Green died.