Von einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu lernen (2014)

Michel, the son of a potter, seems incapable of feeling fear. Nothing can frighten him. His brother Caspar is merely annoyed by this, but his father is worried, since he considers fear an essential survival skill. Even the priest, bribed to scare Michel to death while he is on night watch in the tower, fails. On a walk in the woods, Michel falls in love with Elisabeth, a bold and self-assured young woman who, just to be safe, first holds a knife to his throat. To prove that he is a potter and not a robber, he gives her a clay pipe he made himself. It turns out that she is a princess whose father has lost his castle to the spirit world. He has promised his daughter to the knight who breaks the curse on the castle, although she firmly refuses to be offered as a prize. Everyone who has tried so far has lost their mind in the process. When Michel tells his family about the encounter at home, they mock him: a princess would never marry someone who cannot even feel fear. So he leaves his family and sets out on a journey to learn how to be afraid. In an enchanted marsh, he meets will-o’-the-wisps and two bog bodies, but none of them frightens him. Toward evening, he stops at an inn and hears about the cursed castle. He presents himself to the king and asks to be allowed to try his luck. Elisabeth recognizes him at once and tries to dissuade him because she is afraid for him. But Michel remains undeterred and enters the haunted castle, where he must endure an entire night to break the curse. Elisabeth gives him back the clay pipe he had given her. In the castle, Michel encounters several wondrous figures, but none of them can frighten him. He spends the night in one of the many rooms. There, Tiamat, ruler of the spirits and demons, appears to him. She poses a riddle and threatens to take him with her to the spirit world if he cannot solve it. When he does, Tiamat disappears and magically transports him to a mirror world, from which he can find almost no way out—until he blows on his clay pipe, shattering all the mirrors. Michel has freed the castle from its haunting. He and the princess, who has hurried there, happily fall into each other’s arms. That evening, as they are both about to go to bed and Michel has already made himself comfortable, Elisabeth pours a slippery liquid over him, and he jumps out of bed in fright. In the end, his wife has managed to teach him how to be scared after all. He then reflects that he has known this feeling ever since his first encounter with Elisabeth: he was afraid she would not wait for him.