Yes, exactly. Those made it over to the English version in the old days.
It would be interesting to learn why the German version retains the darkness. Maybe its because Germans get to/are encouraged to read it in the original.
> It would be interesting to learn why the German version retains the darkness.
Because this is the version that the Brothers Grimm wrote down. I am nevertheless aware that there exist other (sometimes even darker) versions of the fairy tales than the versions written down by the Brothers Grimm. In this sense the versions of the Brothers Grimm are not "the original", but some version of the fairy tales (this is the difference between "Volksmärchen" (folk tales) and Kunstmärchen (literary fairy stories) - only for the letter one there exist some concept of "the original").
So I would say that Grimm brothers versions of the fairy tales conserved the zeitgeist of the beginning of the 19th century and there exists to my knowledge no other popular collection of German original language folk fairy tales. But of course today there exist translations of collections of folk fairy tales from different language areas.
It would be interesting to learn why the German version retains the darkness. Maybe its because Germans get to/are encouraged to read it in the original.