Wer reißt denn gleich vorm Teufel aus? (1977)

Jakob is a klutz: He is no use as a blacksmith’s assistant and even trips over his own feet, yet he boldly and disrespectfully stands up to his village’s tax collector. The collector squeezes the last of the money out of the peasants and declares the levy to be protection money against robbers, even though no one has ever seen any robbers. So the peasants promptly decide to change professions and become robbers themselves. When the king visits his subjects in the village, they greet him by throwing stones. They send Jakob to the devil, since his clumsiness is driving them crazy. In the forest, Jakob also incurs the king’s displeasure, among other things by carelessly setting parts of the forest on fire. The perpetually drunk king, suspecting Jakob of being a dangerous robber, sends him to the castle with a message as a “royal postman.” On the way, Jakob meets the peasants, who have since become robbers, and they take his letter from him. It says Jakob is to be hanged immediately as a dangerous robber—but the robbers quickly rewrite it, so that Jakob is now designated as the princess’s future husband. At the castle, Jakob is immediately taken to the princess, who, on the king’s orders, has to live deep underground. The couple are just about to be married when the angry king appears and stops the ceremony. Nevertheless, he agrees to the marriage on the condition that Jakob first bring him the devil’s three golden hairs. Jakob has no intention of doing so, but the princess’s tears move him: she fears being imprisoned underground for the rest of her life. Jakob sets off. He passes through a village where people are dying and no one knows why. Jakob promises to ask the devil about it; he also wants to find out why a village stream elsewhere has suddenly run dry, leaving the people there hungry. The peasants who have become robbers ferry him across to the devil; the king has had them put in irons. Jakob also wants to ask the devil where the key to their shackles is. When he reaches hell, the nearsighted devil mistakes Jakob for his wife. The devil is delighted that there is no arguing and that Jakob has made good soup. After the devil gets fresh with him, Jakob throws himself into his role as the quarrelsome wife and finally sends the devil to bed early. The devil still wants to be deloused, and Jakob gradually manages to pull out all three of his golden hairs and get answers to all three of his questions. The key to the chains is in the king’s coat pocket; a large rat is blocking the village spring, and Jakob manages to pull it out; and a large toad is poisoning the well water in the other village, so it is removed. Eventually, the villagers generously reward Jakob with a donkey and a firearm, and he returns to the castle. He also sees through the king’s trick: the king pretends that the princess has died. Jakob presents the donkey and the firearm as gifts from hell, prompting the king to go there, where the peasant robbers overpower him. They put their shackles on him, so now he has to row the boat. Jakob and the princess are married, and the remorseful devil also gets his three hairs back after, at Jakob’s instruction, eating a whole ox, emptying a full barrel of wine, and dancing with the groom.