A graceful marionette, a masterfully fencing bear, and the ancient thorn puller seek the back door to paradise. Heinrich von Kleist's highly famous short text, teeming with paradoxes, has been and continues to be incessantly reinterpreted: at times it is seen as the key to Kleist's entire oeuvre, with each of Kleist's heroes taking on traits of the three riddle figures, while at other times it is regarded as a witty and ironic feuilleton, through which the author aimed to playfully tease his readership and simultaneously took jabs at the theater stars of his time. The study edition provides a rich selection of materials, contexts, reactions, and responses to this most interpreted Kleist text.