The Cold Heart
"The Cold Heart" (German: Das kalte Herz) is a fairy tale written by Wilhelm Hauff.
The glass-imp grants three wishes to every person born on a Sunday between 11 am and 2 pm, just as Peter Marmot was, but he needs to be summoned with a specific poem.
He owns the most beautiful glass factory in the Black Forest, he dances better than everyone else and, when gambling, he has the same amount of money as Ezekiel does.
Peter's misfortune really starts to unfold when, instead of losing, he suddenly begins to win every single time.
Out of his mind with misery, Peter goes into the forest to find Dutch-Mike, who, unlike the glass-imp, is in league with the devil.
Mike gives Peter even more money and advises him to find an occupation and to marry to relieve his boredom.
Peter builds a mansion in the Black Forest and from then on works as a merchant and debt collector with extortionate rates of interest.
Peter is bad tempered and cheap, and forbids Lisbeth from helping the poor, despite their enormous fortune, which is why she is soon seen as even stingier.
When one day a small, old man drops in and asks for something to drink, Lisbeth, thinking nobody is watching her, offers him wine and bread.
The old man reveals himself to be the glass-imp and replies that Peter had trampled the most beautiful flower of the Black Forest.
The key concept of Romanticism is the longing (Sehnsucht) that Coal-marmot Peter embodies, as he is granted three wishes throughout the story.
In Das kalte Herz: wie ein Mann die Liebe findet; eine tiefenpsychologische Interpretation nach dem Märchen von Wilhelm Hauff Mathias Jung performs psychological analysis on the in-plot development of Peter, and its relationship to Hauff's own life: In 1809, when Hauff was only seven years old, his father died, possibly resulting in an intense mother fixation.
Struggles of the young Hauff might be mirrored in the character of Peter Marmot, who is morally and mentally unstable and plagued by feelings of inferiority.
This also stands for "civil trade and morality" whereas Dutch-Mike depicts the unbridled "profit seeking of the commercial in this first third of the nineteenth century".
[3] According to Jung, Peter Munk remains in a state of self-abuse, in which he plays, dances, drinks and quests after wealth and acknowledgement from others.
Peter is middle-aged and he follows the model of Erik Erikson (identity and lifestyle) at the stage of "generativity vs. stagnation".
One of the central tasks of this lifestyle is the passing on of this life to the next generation, building a house and trying to improve public-mindedness.
