Born: 27 December 1788, Germany
Died: 21 November 1856
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Marie von Dalwigk zu Schauenburg
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
While the Grimm brothers are well-known for “their” fairy tale collections, Wilhelm’s wife Dortchen Wild went uncredited for contributing a quarter of the stories in the first volume of 86 stories. But she was certainly not alone—other largely unacknowledged sources included sisters Jeanette, Marie and Amalie Hassenpflug (who collectively contributed around 40 stories), Dorothea Viehmann (21 to 40+), and Jenny von Droste zu Hülshoff (six). Viehmann was the only one publicly recognised, likely because as the daughter of a tavern owner and widow of a tailor, she fit the brothers’ marketing, which claimed their sources were the common peasant folk, rather than members of their own bourgeois social circles.