These patterns don't show up clearly in individual stories. But it's pretty strong if you read them from end to end.

For example, in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales (at least the version I read), there's a mouse and a cat that are friends. The cat and mouse find some delicious food and they hide it somewhere far away from their house. The cat then proceeds to go "visiting relatives" (in reality he is eating up the delicious food) and the mouse is gullible and believes the cat. After a while the mouse discovers the cat ate up all the food and angrily accuses the cat of being deceitful. The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse. The end.

I think this is a profound story on not ignoring the fact that the cat is the natural predator and the mouse is the natural prey in the relationship. The mouse has convinced itself that this time will be different. This has relevance for e.g. not dismissing signs of abuse.

But it's so easy to read that story and be like, "Well, I guess the point is that gullible people get screwed, so don't be gullible." Or even, "It's a dog-eat-dog world." It's a good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being passive in an abusive relationship.

Telling a story about a mouse and a cat allowed you to keep your head, and the situation was probably common enough for the fable to become widely known before it was picked up by the Bothers Grimm.

It's not that different from Gulliver's Travels complaining about pointless religious wars under the guise of talking about far-away islands of tiny humans, or Star Trek criticizing the Vietnam War under the guise of talking about a primitive planet light-years away centuries in the future.

Then finally when weaker country starts to complain they will completely take over. The stronger country in theory could at any time swallow the weaker, it's just that it might be more beneficial for stronger country to do it in a slower, methodical, deceiving manner, until it can. Or when it actually needs to.

In this case it seems to me it was strategic behavior by the cat to not immediately eat the mouse, but instead consume the fat first. Eating the mouse was a fallback in this scenario.

But overall this specific scenario happens on so many levels of relationships including, but not limited to interpersonal, business, country level, World level, etc.

The main key points in my view are that it is a cat, and cat always will want to eat the mouse in what you would think is pscyhopathic mannerism if it was between people, but it's most easily explainable on level of countries. Because ultimately countries as entities have to act in psychopathic ways with each other, because territories, resources are all clearly limited.

Due to the complexity of World politics you have to co operate with your enemies as well. Both sides are lying to each other, keeping secrets, but at the same time co operating, because they have to or they otherwise will fall behind other countries.

It's the second story. The first is the "frog prince".

> The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse.

Even the english Wikipedia article does not mention the most important part:

    When she beholds the empty pot, enlightenment dawns on the mouse: "First 'Top-off,' " she murmurs, "then 'Half-gone,' and then ..." The cat warns her to say no more, but the mouse persists. The cat pounces on the mouse and eats her up.

The mouse says "All-gone" and is than eaten because of that. And the first version does not contain the phrase

   "And that is the way of the world," the story closes.

One read I get is that the cat is making friends with the mouse so that, specifically in the lean times, it'll be able to eat his "friend", while also not sacrificing any hard-earned payoff in the good times.

Uhmm ... so they should be passive or they will get killed? I guess that was not the point you were trying to make? Like, warn them, that if they don't play their cards right, it will end bad, like for the mouse?

This does not mean the original publication was completely uncensored though. In any case orally transmittet stories does not have a single canonical version.

A bit of morals, a bit of entertainment, a bit of propaganda, a bit of superstition.

The difference between these tales and others is perhaps the "for children" angle.

The private book collection that belonged to Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm testifies to the sixty-year-long period of the fertile research (and artistic) output of the famous German researchers and founders of the German philology, and in itself is an important subject to study. This book collection, comprising rare prints and unique editions, is more than just a series of items of significant material of bibliophile value. It is particularly valuable primarily as a source of knowledge on the research methods used by the two researchers. In the footnotes and indexes to their publications of fairy tales or folk legends, both Jakob and Wilhelm were very meticulous in providing their written source material, i.e. the sources that they held in their book collection, the items of which had purposefully been acquired by the duo to preserve for subsequent editions of old relics European and German literature. Equally important for the research on the literary output and research activity of the Grimm Brothers is the analysis of hand-written underlining, notes and annotations that the texts were typographically enhanced by during the reading. The volumes from the portion of the working collection of the Brothers Grimm found in the Poznań University Library were long though to had been lost during the WWII, and now can be of significant value in their contribution to the development of modern research on the Brothers’ literary and scientific output. The very fact that they have been found allows us to believe that the book collections at the Library can hold other volumes that belonged to the private book collection of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm still to be discovered.

So it's not about books written by the Brothers Grimm, but books which they used in their research.

lots of people mention the advancements and technologies gained from war, but how can we possibly remember what it caused us to lose?

it's gone

After the war, it was necessary to re-create said type libraries, mostly as phototype though, thus ending a golden age of printing which had reigned since Gutenberg, eventually, the Linotype and Monotype machines followed this into dissolution when digital type became prevalent.

While most designs were eventually remade as phototypes, and later as digital type, many of them were only imperfectly preserved, so for example, rather than all the different hot metal sizes and variations, only a single phototype master usually exists, capturing only the state of a single size (usually a larger display size).

Edit: "some", not "most".

The way to become King of Poland was not quite as elaborately ritualized as the German electorate, but not generally/universally hereditary either. But neither did Poland isolate itself from its neighbours, on the contrary. Up until internal strife and the great Nordic War, it involved itself a lot with both central and eastern Europe. And while one may look at the partitions as predatory, let's also remember that for 80 years before the Polish Duma flogged the crown to the highest bidder (August the nth of Saxony, for three generations), which, and realize it's a strong word, also sold the country. Let's remember "predatory" territorial expansions also a little in context; Turkey overrunning the Balkans and Hungary between 1300..1526 eradicated a dozen countries. Louis XIV's wars of reunion were very predatory and gained France territory the size of Switzerland. The Austria-Turkey wars after 1683 "undid" 200 years of Turkish rule in Hungary within two decades, as did Russia taking over the Cossack Hetmanates, Crimea; the wars of the Spanish and Austrian succession changed territorial "ownership" on a large scale as well. What Napoleon, in league with quite a few of the German states, did to "countries" in Germany was neither less disruptive nor, territory-wise, smaller in scale than the partitions of Poland.

That doesn't make them "right". I would contest though that they were a "uniquely polish" sort of doom. Other countries lost their independence for centuries as well (Serbia, Hungary, Bohemia/Czechy, Lithuania if you like ...).

The difference "then" was that such changes in overlordship only began to be associated with forceful removals of population - ethical cleansing - after the rise of nationalism post Napoleon. My country (Germany) did rather evil there, and can't blame others for having taken retribution. No need for "love lost". It's not deserved.

The real evil was less the partitions and the "ganging up" on Poland, but the nationalism in the 19th century. The idea that within your country's boundaries, there shall be one language, one culture. It'd have been considered very odd up to ~1700 for sure. And it created all the evil between 1780 and 1945. Looking at Russia trying to eradicate Ukraine, maybe ... to this day.

And yet, it's all _shared_ history.

Excellent contribution. Marion Gräfin Dönhof talks about this, a descendant of both Prussian and newly turned "Polish" political elite and aristocracy. Some of her german ancestors adopted polish names and became thus polish. Before the rise of nationalism, there was not really such a gap between nations as today. Germans sometimes even ruled parts of Poland with no issues. There were also special laws and leaders in Poland exclusively for Germans, in other words, the Germans in Poland ruled themselves, living side by side respectfully with the Polish people. All of this makes one ask what nations really are and what national identity really is in the end, beyond political propaganda. National coherence was forced onto people everywhere, with dramatic consequences and suffering.

People have lived hundreds or even thousands of years without the need for unified nations, often many different cultures coexisting with each other under a banner of a "nation", which was mostly just the culture of a given ruling aristocracy at that time.

Your general remark that Polish art disappeared from Poland is true. Your implication that only Germany was responsible for that is wrong. The german state is generally cooperative, in contrast to the ex-soviet states, in giving back and trying to find solutions. Even from the private side is cooperation - some time ago some private owner gave back art to Poland, which rarely happens.

You did not provide a source for your claim that "German government is kind enough to let Poles bid for the art they carelessly lost".

However, returning the stolen goods is on a different level from taking on the penalties or damages of the initial theft.

Wow. It sounds like you have a grossly misinformed view of this part of the world, with a clear sense of superiority of one culture over the other. So, here's a few facts for you:

> Most likely on October 12-13, 1944, the Brandkommando of the Wehrmacht (Nazi German army) burned collections of the most valuable literary monuments from the National Library in one of the greatest losses to Polish culture in its history, and one of the greatest losses to written culture in history of the world. The National Library lost at least 39,000 manuscripts – and most likely more, perhaps as many as 50,000 – along with some 80,000 books from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, 100,000 books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 60,000 drawings and engravings, 25,000 musical scores and 10,000 maps. The great family libraries were almost wiped out, such as the famous collection of manuscripts of the Krasiński Library, of which just 78 volumes survived out of more than 7,000.¹

¹ https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-germans-...

> Yes, most of the damage is known and extends across the entire old German Reich, from Karlsruhe to Kiel, from Munich to Königsberg. The largest German library in the Reich was hit most spectacularly. In July 1943, the Hamburg City Library alone lost 700,000 volumes in “Aktion Gomorrha”. As far as the individual titles themselves are concerned, the relevant data is often still missing - unfortunately. There is no large and accurate work on the books and libraries that once existed and were lost or not returned during the Second World War.

> How do you assess the historical and intellectual damage caused to our cultural memory by the absence of German books?

> I will answer this question with a quote from the first expert on the subject from 1947: “It is a catastrophe that has no comparison in the history of libraries and in the history of science” (Georg Leyh). We have no account of the demise of German libraries. Germany has lost significant parts of its cultural memory forever. But who knows about it? Conversely, the greatest crime committed by Germany has led to an irretrievable loss of urban silhouettes and cultural witnesses. The answer? Never-ending mourning and never-ending work of remembrance.

https://www.fr.de/kultur/literatur/eine-katastrophe-11007951...

Generally, the cultural loss via burning down libraries and knowledge is inherent to war, and obviously does not only affect one country. The article also mentions the Library of Warsaw as an example of lost knowledge, but the loss of german culture "has no comparison in the history of libraries", per renowned librarian Georg Leyh.

P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)

> P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)

It does not, the German state dropped it for safekeeping in Lower Silesia and according to international law, its ownership was transferred together with the legal status of the respective territories per the Potsdam conference. Any discussion on the possible return of parts of the collection would need to start with the return of the thousands of Polish works of art held in German collections, to which, unlike Poland's legal claim to the Berlinka collection, Germany has none.

to which I gave a reference that makes a good case for this to be indeed true.

You chose to ignore it and instead resort to talking about something unrelated (intent), which is a straw man, and you also launch an ad hominem, another logical fallacy. You also resort to faulty generalizations.

In case you have overlooked it, here's the most relevant part of the quotes I gave:

> “It is a catastrophe that has no comparison in the history of libraries and in the history of science” (Georg Leyh). We have no account of the demise of German libraries. Germany has lost significant parts of its cultural memory forever.

"European history knows two forms of terror. The first is the uncontrollable explosion of bloodlust in a victorious mass uprising. The other is cold, calculated cruelty committed by a victorious state as a demonstration of power and intimidation. The two forms of terror normally correspond to revolution and repression. The first is revolutionary. It justifies itself by the rage and fever of the moment, a temporary madness. The second is repressive. It justifies itself by the preceding revolutionary atrocities."

The racist pseudoscience of the Germanic übermensch served the same purpose as the skull measuring scientific racism used to justify the enslavement and extermination of the native population in African colonies. "Lebensraum" was just a Germanized version of Manifest Destiny.

The colonization of Africa, India and the Americas involved massive displacement of natives and mass killings that at least colloquially can best be described as genocides. Much the same way as forests were cleared to create farmland, native populations were cleared to create "living space" for settlers. Much like natural resources were exploited and brought back home, natives were used for manual labor until they were used up.

Nationalism allowed leaders to use a national identity to rally their subjects against their neighbors. In an act of massive hubris and severe underestimation of technological advancements this nationalist fervor led to the mass death event that was WW1. WW2 in turn built on this but also brought colonialism home with the explicit goal of not only redrawing borders but also repurposing the land and eliminating any natives standing in the way.

I.e. Poland may have engaged in nationalist assimilation in the form of Polonizing Lithuania but Germany explicitly wanted to remove anyone not part of the "volk", at the barrel of a gun if necessary.

Not only were parts of Eastern Prussia reassigned to other countries but also Prussian provinces within Germany were dissolved and remodeled into the German Bundesländer. Today "Prussia" as a cohesive identity largely only exists as something for Bavarians to differentiate themselves from. Well into WW1 German national identity was defined more by Prussia than anything else but the Allies completely eliminated it. Denazification was largely a farce and appeals by influential people were mostly rubberstamped but Deprussification is the secret success story.

War is one thing, but the inexorable march through geologic time is far worse. Everything we are and know will be erased due to entropy and the arrow of time.

The fact that these volumes were "lost" suggests to me that there are "new" tales in these pages.

Other Disney fairy tale moves were based on other sources like Charles Perrault (Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty). Grimm also have variants of these tales, but they are significantly different.

It is probabaly unavoidable that a retelling of a folktale will reflect the biases of the storyteller. It is just that politics which align with ones own tend to be invisible. Like when having a black stormtrooper is considered political but a white isn’t.

We also see what happens to certain black men in the world, during “Song of the Roustabouts” (“when other folks have gone to bed / we slave until we’re almost dead,” “boss man hounding / keep on pounding / ‘grab that rope you hairy ape’”)

Afterwards we see the cruel and arbitrary nature of those who mock the poor kid, contrasted to the universal experience of family (“Baby mine don’t you cry”). Eventually the kid ends up with a bunch of (black) crows, including one Mr. “Jim Crow,” who make fun of him, before his buddy from Brooklyn calls them out on how people make fun of them for being different too, and they feel real bad; after finding friendship there, he earns social acceptance for his athletic feats (flight) and later through participation in the armed forces (“Dum-bombers for victory!!” read the newspapers.)

You sayin’ that this isn’t about race at all, and the whole storyline is just a coinkydink? Ha! Tell me another one. Disney’s been at this stuff for longer than your parents have been alive.

They mention the prints are unique and presumably the footnotes they found are ... but I agree, the question of content is surprisingly not mentioned at all.

I can just imagine being a librarian and someone walks up to check the book out ...

It was majority Polish during that period, with Germans making up at most 40% of the population, or ~65000, when it became a part of Poland again.