Editing Brothers Grimm (section)

=== Marburg ===
[[File:Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm.png|thumb|Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm in an 1843 drawing by younger brother [[Ludwig Emil Grimm]]]]

After graduation from the {{lang|de|Friedrichsgymnasium}}, the brothers attended the [[University of Marburg]]. The university was small with about 200 students, and there they became painfully aware that students of lower social status were not treated equally. They were disqualified from admission because of their social standing and had to request a dispensation to study law. Wealthier students received stipends, but the brothers were excluded even from tuition aid. Their poverty kept them from student activities or university social life, but their outsider status worked in their favor and they pursued their studies with extra vigor.<ref name="Z(1988)31ff" />

Inspired by their law professor, [[Friedrich Carl von Savigny|Friedrich von Savigny]], who awakened in them an interest in history and [[philology]], the brothers studied [[Middle High German literature|medieval German literature]].<ref name="Z(1988)35ff" /> They shared Savigny's desire to see the unification of the 200 German [[Principality|principalities]] into a single state. Through Savigny and his circle of friends—[[German Romanticism|German romantics]] such as [[Clemens Brentano]] and [[Ludwig Achim von Arnim]]—the Grimms were introduced to the ideas of [[Johann Gottfried Herder]], who thought that German literature should revert to simpler forms, which he defined as {{lang|de|Volkspoesie}} (natural poetry)—as opposed to {{lang|de|Kunstpoesie}} (artistic poetry).<ref name="Z(2002)7ff">{{Harvnb|Zipes|2002|pp=7–8}}</ref> The brothers dedicated themselves with great enthusiasm to their studies, of which Wilhelm wrote in his autobiography, "the ardor with which we studied Old German helped us overcome the spiritual depression of those days."<ref name="Z(2002)7">qtd. in {{Harvnb|Zipes|2002|p=7}}</ref>

Jacob was still financially responsible for his mother, brother, and younger siblings in 1805, so he accepted a post in Paris as Savigny's research assistant. On his return to Marburg he was forced to abandon his studies to support the family, whose poverty was so extreme that food was often scarce, and take a job with the Hessian War Commission. In a letter to his aunt from this time, Wilhelm wrote of their circumstances: "We five people eat only three portions and only once a day".<ref name="Z(1988)35ff">qtd. in {{Harvnb|Zipes|1988|p=35}}</ref>