What is the German title of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale collection?

The German title of the Brothers Grimm fairy-tale collection is Kinder- und Hausmärchen. The phrase translates literally as “Children’s and Household Tales,” although the collection is widely known in English as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume under this title in 1812 and the second volume in 1815. The work was not simply a book of stories written by the brothers: they gathered material from oral narrators, printed sources, and literary traditions, then edited and reshaped it across successive editions.

The abbreviation KHM comes from the German title and is used by scholars to identify individual tales, such as KHM 50 for Briar Rose and KHM 55 for Rumpelstiltskin. The title therefore refers to the whole collection, not to one particular story.

“Grimms Märchen” is a common informal German expression meaning “Grimm’s fairy tales,” but it is not the collection’s original formal title. “Märchen der Brüder Grimm” is descriptive rather than canonical.