STORIES

The account of his love affair with the lovely Miesmies by the very gifted tomcat Murr, who had been taught to read and write by his erudite master and who had then proceeded to write his autobiography, including this most delightful episode from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s wonderful masterwork “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1821).” (2,400 words)
Translated specially for this site An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original text can (...)

The first book published by the future author of The Scarlet Letter, a collection of stories that had previously appeared in various New England newspapers, all evoking the past epochs of that English colony, all with a tinge of the occult and the mysterious, and just about all with a quite passionate anger at the rigidities and injustices of the rigorous Puritan mentality that was so characteristic of that colony and that was still somewhat present in later times there.
A precious and (...)

Hermann Hesse, the celebrated author of Siddharta and Steppenwolf, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, was also a masterful writer of short stories, of which this delicate, charming account of a young man returning to his birthplace is an outstanding example.
It has been specially translated here for this site. (14,400 words) An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original text can also be seen here. > CHAPTER ONE (...)

An account of life and death and nature in the high alps in upper Austria long before modern life changed the ancient ways in those remote parts, recounted with strong poetic overtones by the narrator as he remembers a striking incident from his youth in that magnificent region.
A charming, captivating and finally very moving reading experience.
By the Austrian writer, painter and teacher Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868), one of the leading figures of the Biedermeier literary movement that (...)

An elderly man meditates on the great love of his life, a young girl who had promised to follow him around the world but who had married one of his oldest friends while he was away from her pursuing his university studies.
Delicately told in the light, poetical and nature-loving style of one of the most gifted and prolific German writers of his time, the distinguished jurist, poet, novelist and story-writer Theodor Sturm (1817-1888).
Translated by C. W. Bell M. A. an e-book, with the (...)

A young officer in Vienna decides to help a former comrade in need by risking his meagre funds in a card game with fellow officers and a selection of respectable local citizens. A decision that leads inexorably to drama and downfall culminating in a final existential crisis that plunges him into the very depths of his soul and a final understanding of just what kind of a man he really is.
Clearly although not specifically set in the years prior to the outbreak of World War I, this (...)

The Court Counsellor Reutlinger organizes an elaborate festival on his grounds every three years to which everyone in the area, young and old, is invited – on the condition that they put on the clothes and accoutrements of the year 1760, a particularly important moment in the Counsellor’s life, as he explains to a distinguished lady of his own age some forty years afterwards as they stroll through his grounds among the revelry – and resolves a lifelong dilemma in doing so.
A charming (...)

A powerful moral fable about the addictive and devastating fascination for gambling that has wreaked so much havoc in so many lives throughout time, by one of the leading spirts of the German Romanic movement. (12,000 words) an e-book, with the original texts in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original texts can also be seen here. GAMBLER’S LUCK
Pyrmont had a larger concourse of visitors than ever in the summer of 18—. The number of rich and illustrious strangers (...)

A particularly charming and renowned (in German-speaking countries) fictional account, by one of the major German poets of the 19th century, of the encounters and adventures and (brilliant) conversations of the great composer on the way from Vienna to Prague where his new opera Don Giovanni was about to be premiered. (18,900 words) An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original text can also be seen here. MOZART’S JOURNEY FROM VIENNA TO (...)

Wilhelm Hauff, a rising star of the rich "Biedermeier" period of German literature in the early 19th century, was able to publish outstanding collections of fairy tales that he called Almanacs in each of his last three years before his tragic death by typhoid fever in 1827 at the age of 24.
This is his Almanac of 1826, featuring his celebrated story about a Caliph and his Vizier who were transformed into storks by a magician, at their request, in order to be able to understand the (...)