Kopfkino: A Hare, a Hedgehog, and a Doof

On Kids Radio, the cheerful German storyteller Wilhelm Holstein welcomes listeners to an hour of fairy tales. He explains the wonderful German word Kopfkino, which means "movies in the head": he will read the stories, and the listeners will make the movies. Today he shares two old tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, and he challenges his audience to pluck out the morals hidden in each one.

The first tale is about a hare and a hedgehog. On a bright spring Sunday, a proud hare is gobbling cabbages in a garden he has claimed as his own when a hedgehog slowly totters up to say good morning. The hare answers with insults, sneering that he is superior in every way while the hedgehog is dull and impossibly slow. He boasts, "I have a sharp mind, a keen wit, and a massive self-esteem." Fed up, the hedgehog challenges him to a race. The hare agrees on the condition that a hedgehog victory means the hare stays out of the garden, while a hare victory bans the hedgehog instead, and the hedgehog trots home first for a bite to eat. There he greets his wife Ernestine, whom he mistakes for his own reflection, since every hedgehog looks exactly alike. That very mix-up gives him an idea, and he whispers a sneaky plan into her ear.

At the meadow, the race begins. The hare rockets across the field, only to find a hedgehog already waiting at the finish line asking what took him so long. What the hare does not know is that Ernestine is stationed at one end of the meadow and her husband at the other, so no matter which way he runs, an identical hedgehog seems to have beaten him there. Insisting each loss was a fluke, the furious hare races back and forth seventy-three times, and every time a hedgehog is calmly waiting. Humiliated, he never finishes race seventy-four; he simply vanishes into the forest while the whole countryside laughs and makes hare jokes. Wilhelm points out the morals: pride comes before the tumble, and no one should mock another creature, even a hedgehog. But he adds that the hedgehog does not get off free either, for the Bible warns against lips that flap with deceit. Hearing this, the hare himself interrupts the story, stunned to finally learn how he was tricked, and storms off to get revenge. On the way he is caught in a snare by a hunter named Revenge and ends up as a plate of hasenpfeffer, which teaches the final lesson: "Avoid revenge or it will eat you up."

The second tale, The Three Languages, tells of an old count in the Swiss Alps whose only son, Doof, cannot seem to learn anything, no matter how his teachers try. The exasperated count sends him away to study for a year, but Doof comes home having learned only what dogs say when they bark. A second year with a better teacher produces only most of a recipe for boiling water and the language of birds. After a third year with the finest professor of all, Doof proudly announces he has learned what frogs say when they croak. His father gives up and sends him out to make his own way in the world, predicting it will be a very odd way indeed.

Doof wanders to a castle and asks for lodging, but the only space is a tower full of wild, ravenous dogs that bark day and night and have devoured anyone who slept there. Undaunted, Doof asks for scrambled eggs to share and walks right in. Instead of attacking, the dogs wag their tails, eat the eggs, and explain to him that they are bound by an oath to guard a great treasure and cannot leave until someone takes it away. The next morning the astonished lord of the manor learns that Doof speaks dog, and when Doof retrieves a chest of gold from the tower, the grateful lord invites him to live there forever. Doof politely declines, since his father told him to make his own odd way, and moves on.

Passing a marsh, Doof listens to the croaking frogs and grows sad at their news. He follows it to a town whose reverend has just died, where the church members are squabbling over who should replace him and agreeing that only a miraculous sign from God should decide. Just then doves speak to Doof, and when the townspeople see that he understands animals, they declare that such a man must be touched by God and beg him to become their new pastor. Doof hesitates, feeling unworthy of so high a calling, but the birds tell him he should do it, and the frogs and the dogs think so too. Reminded that a wise man listens to counsel, he accepts. The boy his father thought was a failure becomes the most admired reverend in the land, preaching, with a little help from his feathered friends, that if God feeds the birds of the air, his people need not worry.

Wilhelm closes with the moral: God often uses the people no one would ever choose, like a boy to fight a giant or fishermen to be disciples. "God has bigger eyes than we do," he says, and he sees wonderful possibilities in the middle of odd times.