The Heinzelmännchen: The Little Helpers of Cologne Who Left Forever
Most legends of the hidden helpers are told in the present tense: the tomte still keeps the farm, the knockers still tap in the mine. Cologne's is told in the past, and that is its whole terrible point. Once—so runs the legend fixed forever in August Kopisch's beloved 1836 poem, which every German child still learns—the citizens of Cologne did not need to work . By night, while the city slept, the Heinzelmännchen came: little men a span high, industrious as bees, who finished every trade's labor before dawn. The carpenter's beams were sawn, joined, and raised; the baker's bread stood in golden rows; the butcher's sausages were stuffed, the wine-cooper's casks bound, the tailor's senator's-coat stitched to the last buttonhole. The craftsman of Cologne, says the poem with affectionate malice, could lie on his bench and be lazy : the work did itself, or seemed to. No wages were asked; no thanks were possible, for the little men had one law, the univer...