If you want to understand how the Grimms came to their fairy tales, you only have to examine the etymology of the word “contribute”: in Latin, con = with, tribuere = to bestow; together contribut as the root for “to bring together”.
Most of the fairy tales edited and published by the Grimms were presented to them, dictated by about 40 different contemporaries.
“She comes almost once every week and unloads her stories, then we alternately take down her dictation for 3 - 4 hours (...) The woman gets her coffee, a glass of wine, and some money to top it off (...).” This is how Wilhelm Grimm describes the cooperation with the most famous "fairy tale woman", Dorothea Viehmann, in a letter. The meetings with other contributors will have taken a similar course, whereby officer Krause requested and probably got "discarded trousers" as a reward.
Fairytale Contributors
Goodness gracious! Although dead for over 200 years, I am omnipresent as a historical figure on the German Fairy Tale Route with my fantastic stories.
Baron von Münchhausen - Lying Baron from Münchhausen region of Bodenwerder