Experts cry foul over world's most valuable Fairy Tales 04/01/2008 00:00

The world's most expensive fairy tale collection, a five-volume set personally annotated by the Brothers Grimm, has been usurped by a German museum, a panel of academics said.

4 January 2008

Berlin (dpa) - The world's most expensive fairy tale collection, a five-volume set personally annotated by the Brothers Grimm, has been usurped by a German museum, a panel of academics asserted Thursday.

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm collected folk tales in Germany, putting Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel into print for the world.

After publication the two scholars kept adding notes and corrections in the margins of their personal copy.

Secreted in the vaults of a bank in Kassel, northern Germany, that set is estimated to be worth 30 million euros and is listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World index.

The Grimm Museum in the city of Kassel says the books are the property of its own Grimm Society. But the state library in the city says it is the true owner and the museum only borrowed them.

More than 30 Grimm experts from Germany and elsewhere made a written appeal to the museum to give in, saying the library could digitize the books and put the images online.

The experts said UNESCO should never have recognized the museum as owner.