Once Upon a Law: the Grimm Brothers’ stories, language, and legal culture

The Maastricht University Library, the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences bring you an exhibition highlighting the relationship between the stories of the Brothers Grimm and their lesser-known works about language and law. The exhibition focuses on the perspective of the Grimm brothers as legal scholars, and through that lens, underlying legal customs become visible in the themes of their most famous fairy tales. In fact, the Brothers Grimm began collecting fairy tales as a way to map these customs for the benefit of other scholars; their original intention had nothing to do with telling stories to children. This exhibition marks the first ever collaboration at Maastricht University between the library's Special Collections, the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Rare books exhibited. Rare legal books and highly-prized illustrated fairy tales from the so-called Golden Age of Illustration (1880s-1930s) are on display, and there is an interactive panel where one can wear Little Red Riding Hood's hooded cape and take a selfie with a custom fairy tale backdrop. The exhibit highlights the breadth of the Golden Age of Illustration collection held by Maastricht University Special Collections, a treasured assortment of more than fifty of the most beautifully illustrated children's books from the turn of the twentieth century.