1) It's not the German but the original version. While most fairy tales known today were gathered in what later became Germany, there is a decent amount of French, Italian, Czech, Danish, Russian and Arabian ones.
2) If you think of Disney when you hear fairy tale, you don't know any fairy tales. By making fairy tales family friendly for a prudish and sensitive American audience, Disney not only removed lots of content from the originals but in some cases even distorted the tales to an extent that the meaning was completely lost.
Some of these stories can be traced back linguistically to proto-Indo-European - 5000 or more years ago. The tale of "boy steals the giant's treasure" is one example. So I don't think we can blame the Germans.
2) If you think of Disney when you hear fairy tale, you don't know any fairy tales. By making fairy tales family friendly for a prudish and sensitive American audience, Disney not only removed lots of content from the originals but in some cases even distorted the tales to an extent that the meaning was completely lost.