Paul the Puppeteer

Storm's famous novella, written for young readers in 1874. Deals in a playful, somewhat sentimental way with one of the "big questions" of German literature, the collision between bourgeois respectability and the arts. I suspect that modern children wouldn't have much time for the final section, but the big scene where Paul and Liesei get locked in after a performance of Faust still makes exciting reading.

It's so long since anyone had read this to me that I managed to read Martin Walser's Ein Springender Brunnen a few weeks ago without noticing the way he alludes very heavily to this story in one of his key plot lines.

Pole Poppenspäler, by Theodor Storm.

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