Rübezahl
Rübezahl, you should know, has the nature of a powerful genius: capricious, impetuous, peculiar, rascally, crude, immodest, haughty, vain, fickle, today your warmest friend, tomorrow alien and cold; …roguish and respectable, stubborn and flexible… In legends, Rübezahl appears as a capricious giant, gnome, or mountain spirit.
Unexpectedly or playfully, he sends lightning and thunder, fog, rain and snow from the mountain above, even while the sun is shining.
He may take the appearance of a monk in a gray frock (like Wotan); he holds a stringed instrument in his hand (the storm harp) and walks so heavily that the earth trembles around him.
Historically, his character has kept on expanding; from a bad demon causing storms and heavy snow, he evolved into a guardian of the poor people living in his mountains.
Originally from Lauban (Lubań) in Lower Silesia, Vettin-Zahn was expelled from her hometown like other Silesian Germans and subsequently resettled in Switzerland after 1945.
Józef Sykulski saw in Rübezahl a Slav who protected the Slavic natives against alleged German oppression.
Poems include Ferdinand Freiligrath's "Aus dem schlesischen Gebirge" (1844)[14] and Robert Reinick's "Rübezahls Mittagstisch" (1876).
[16] In Britain this included three new "Legends of Number-Nip" (1826–1828) by Scottish authors the Misses Corbett,[17][18][19] and the unfinished story "The Lord of the Hills" (c. 1835) by Thomas Love Peacock.
[20] Several German Rübezahl tales have been translated into English, including eight of Praetorius' stories by William John Thoms (1834);[21] many translations of Musäus' tales, notably by Thomas Beddoes (1791), William Hazlitt (1845), and Mark Lemon (1863); Apel, Fouqué, and Henrik Steffens' stories by George Godfrey Cunningham (1829); five of Johann Peter Lyser's tales by Elizabeth F. Ellet (1847); and Rosalie Koch's version by Charles Nordhoff (1858) and Mary Catherine Rowsell (1864).
[23] Rübezahl is mentioned in Mike Mignola's Hellboy: Conqueror Worm (2001) by the character Inger Von Klempt.
Near Mount Sněžka in Czechia close to the Polish border, there is a botanical locality with an especially large variety of plants that bears the name "Rübezahl's Garden".
In the vicinity of Jelenia Góra and other Polish locales under the Giant Mountains, there is an annual series of opera performances titled Muzyczny Ogród Liczyrzepy, which translates into English as "Rübezahl's Musical Garden".
The Czech variant of Rübezahl, Krakonoš, features in literature and in other culture: Musäus, Johann Karl August (1845).
