[3] Reflecting in these passages on the concept of the »invisible« he looks at the role of the invisible as associated with mountains and takes his examples from German Romantic literature. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann's tale »Die Bergwerke zu Falun« was published 1819 in his collection »Die Serapionsbrüder«. Compared to the classic simplicity of Johann Peter Hebel's masterful tale »Unverhofftes Wiedersehen« Hoffmann's rendering of the same story seems somewhat overblown and too deliberately romantic to me. I am amazed that the toughminded author of »In Stahlgewittern« or »Der Arbeiter« is so palpably fascinated by it. [4] He seems equally taken in by the ingenuous folk tales of Barbarossa, Frau Venus and the Getreue Eckard, as collected by the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their »Deutsche Sagen« [1816/18].
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