German Fairy Tale Route

The Deutsche Märchenstrasse was established in 1975 and runs about six hundred kilometres from Hanau, where Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in 1785 and 1786, north through Steinau where they grew up, Marburg and Kassel where they studied and worked, and on through towns attached to individual tales to Bremen. The brothers were philologists collecting oral material, not authors inventing it, and much came from a small number of informants, notably Dorothea Viehmann near Kassel. Sites along the route include Sababurg for Sleeping Beauty and Hamelin for the Pied Piper, whose story rests on a documented medieval town record.

Highlights

• The Grimm towns - Hanau, Steinau, Marburg and Kassel in sequence.
• The tale sites - Sababurg, Hamelin and others attached to specific stories.
• The collectors' method - the brothers' work as philologists, not authors.
• The route length - about six hundred kilometres from Hanau to Bremen.

When to go

May to September; open-air performances and festivals run through summer in several towns. Winter closes many of the smaller attractions.

Practical notes

It is a marketing route, and the link between many towns and specific tales is loose. Doing the length takes days. Some sites are strongly aimed at children.

Nearby

Hanau is the southern end; Bremen the northern.