However the death of their mother, Dorothea, brought them even closer because they were forced to help support their other six brothers and sister. In 1808, Jacob took a job as a librarian in Kassel, Germany and Wilhelm soon followed. .
In 1810, the French Revolution and Napoleon I brought an end to the declining Holy Roman Empire and forced the German states notably Prussia, to accept his social, political and administrative reforms (Antonsen 38). Jacob hated being ruled or forced to reform by Napoleon I so he attempted to use peasant poetry, fairy tale, and mythology to reconstruct the pre-Christian religion of the Germanic people. In Little Red Cap the wolf could have been Jacob's way of illustrating the devil that persuaded the grandmother and Little Red Cap into bed with him so he could eat them. But the savior of the story or Jesus Christ of the story was the hunter who "saved" grandmother and Little Red Cap like the story in the Bible about Jonah and the whale. Throughout Jacobs attempt to reconstruct the religion of the Germanic people he and his brother finally put together their first collection of folk songs and folktales and it was called Kinder-und Hausmarchen (Grimm's Fairly Tales) (43). Little Red Cap is one of the many fairy tales in Kinder-und Hausmarchen, which was written in 1812 (44). .
Living in Germany at this time and being humiliated by Napoleon I caused German nationalist to favor a strong and unified state. German nationalist tried to help unify their country by establishing the Congress of Vienna, which in turn brought some order and unity to Germany (Zipes 37). In Little Red Cap, the Grimm brothers used the wolf to portray Napoleon I because he and the wolf both invade and concur but yet are later forced out by over powering forces like the hunter. .
The Grimm brothers also could have used the wolf to show how the German men in the 1800's treated women.