Magic Fairy Tales

Albert EhrensteinProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4

Word count: 77K words
Chapters: 8

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Zaubermärchen by Albert EhrensteinAuthor: Ehrenstein, Albert, 1886-1950,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Aug 1, 2011

Editor's review

This Zaubermärchen (Fairy Tale) is a German-language literary work written by the Austrian author Albert Ehrenstein in the early twentieth century and belongs to the German literature category of the Project Gutenberg free eBook program. Using the fairy-tale genre as its vehicle, the work carries the imaginative tension and poetic language characteristic of Expressionist literature. It is not long and serves as an accessible introduction to a marginal German-language writer and to variations on the fairy-tale form. The electronic edition is a public-domain resource, and the main barrier to reading lies in the language rather than the length: the German original preserves the linguistic feel of its period, so non-German readers will need a dictionary or a bilingual edition. Its value lies not in a convoluted plot but in the combination of linguistic experimentation and fairy-tale form, making it supplementary material for German learners seeking to broaden their reading and for literature enthusiasts examining early twentieth-century German short prose. Because source materials are limited, the specific structure and plot of the individual pieces should not be conjectured here; readers are advised to approach the text with an open mind.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners with basic German reading ability who want to broaden their literary reading
Readers interested in early twentieth-century German literature and variations on the fairy-tale form
Literature students researching the works of marginal writers of the Expressionist period
Readers who prefer short texts with linguistic experimentation

Not a good fit for

General readers with no German at all who want easy reading
Readers expecting traditional children's fairy tales with complete plots and clear structure
Beginners who need extensive notes and guidance to enter the text

Reading tips

Read through once without worrying about full comprehension to feel the rhythm of the language, then reread closely paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary.
Prepare a German dictionary or bilingual tool and note recurring image words in particular.
After reading, look up Ehrenstein's life and the Expressionist background to help understand the text's style.
Read it alongside traditional tales such as Grimms' Fairy Tales and compare the differences in narrative approach.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

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.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for German beginners?

Not really for readers starting from zero. The text is in the original German and carries the linguistic feel and literary expression of the early twentieth century, so its vocabulary and sentence patterns pose clear obstacles for beginners. At least intermediate German reading ability is recommended, or use with a dictionary and bilingual materials.

Why is there no detailed plot introduction for this book?

The available materials provide only bibliographic information and publication metadata, not the content of the individual pieces. To avoid conjecture, the recommendation focuses only on genre, language style, and ways of reading. Readers may sample the opening before deciding whether to go further.

What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition?

This book comes from Project Gutenberg and is a free public-domain eBook, laid out mainly as plain text and possibly lacking the design of a print edition. A reading app that supports font adjustment and dictionary lookup is recommended for convenient reference to unfamiliar words and long sentences.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Albert Ehrenstein Author · Austrian · 1886–1950

Albert Ehrenstein (1886–1950), an Austrian Expressionist poet and novelist, was born in Vienna to a Jewish family and received his doctorate in history from the University of Vienna in 1910. He rose to fame in 1911 with Tubutsch and associated with the painter Kokoschka and Walden, becoming an important representative of German-language Expressionism. Works such as Nicht da, nicht dort and Zaubermärchen often employ sharp, imaginative language to express modern alienation and spiritual crisis. In the 1930s his works were banned by the Nazis; he went into exile in Switzerland, moved to New York in 1941, and died in poverty and illness in 1950.