Arson, child death, tyrannicide, blasphemy, shipwrecks, and ghostly apparitions: ballads are not for the faint of heart. Often in just a few stanzas, they tell stories full of tension and drama; rhythm and rhyme entice loud recitation - transforming quiet readers into extroverted storytellers. Memorizing them used to be part of a student's duties. This selection contains the most famous classics of the genre, from "The Erlking" to "The Boy in the Moor," from "The Bond" to Fontane's tribute to the proverbial Brandenburg pear and friend of humanity: "Thus still bestows a blessing the hand / Of von Ribbeck on Ribbeck in Havelland." Burkhard Neie has translated the drama and the deep emotions of the most beautiful German ballads into congenial images: a book for reading and reciting.