Grimm’s anti-Danish sentiments were a constant throughout his life. They originated from his irritation over Danish language policies as they affected the German-speaking population of Schleswig and Holstein (at a period when Denmark was despised among intellectuals for its abolutist government) and fed into his increasingly vituperative rivalry with his Danish counterpart Rasmus Rask (who, for his part, was irked by what he perceived as Germans’ overweening attitude vis-à-vis their smaller northern neighbour).
Grimm later developed the view that the territory of Schleswig-Holstein, and perhaps all of Jutland, historically belonged to the German lands, and that between the two great cultural blocks of the Germanic world (German and Scandinavian) there was no room for an independent Denmark.