Rübezahl
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Learners with some German foundation who wish to improve their reading through original texts
- Folklore and culture enthusiasts interested in German folk legends and the mountain-spirit motif
- Students of folklore and comparative literature studying oral traditions and local legends
- Readers of classical literature who enjoy short-story collections and fragmented reading
Not a good fit for
- Beginners with no German foundation who need a Chinese parallel text to read
- Readers of genre fiction expecting modern fantasy settings and a coherent long-form plot
- Researchers seeking rigorous scholarly annotation and textual criticism
Reading tips
- Read through once to grasp the outline of the stories, then a second time to look up unfamiliar words and legendary allusions, avoiding interrupting the rhythm by checking as you go
- Keep a motif list recording the mountain spirit's changing image across stories, and summarize common features after finishing
- Read one or two short pieces a day with aloud reading to practice German language sense, which is more effective than reading through in one sitting
- Read in comparison with related mountain-spirit stories in Grimms' fairy tales to observe how the same motif is handled differently in different texts
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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About the author
Rosalie Koch (1811–1880) was a German children's literature writer of the nineteenth century. Public information about her life is limited, and the details that can be confirmed center mainly on her writing career. She devoted herself to writing for children and young readers, producing chiefly fairy tales and stories for young people. Her works often drew on folklore and the world of imagination, were written for a young readership, and emphasized readability and appeal. Her representative work, Rübezahl, takes as its material the story of the mountain spirit in German folklore, reflecting her approach of drawing on traditional folk narratives and retelling them in a form suited to young readers. Her works circulated fairly widely in the nineteenth century and found a readership, making her one of the writers active in German-language children's literature of her time and contributing to the transmission of folk tales among young readers.
