Here in town I’m called Pole Poppenspäler, my rea’ name is Paul Paulsen and my trade is to make marionettes and handpuppets, and to give lifetothem, I’m awood carverand meôhanic.TheodorStorm, one of our North German poets and novelists, found my life interesting enough to write it down in 1874 so that I live in memory forever. 

My whole life story started when I was a little boy and something exciting happened. Our town was to be the place where the Tendler family put on a puppet show “Count Siegfried and Holy Genoveva”. The puppeteers arrived in a light cart pulled by small horse. All marionettes and hand puppets were made by themselves, and when I sneaked behind the scenes with daughter Lisei I was deeply stirred how poor they looked. However, when my father had given me a nickel for the performance, I was always hypnotized by the puppets moving in the dim lights on the stage, they appeared real and took on a magical life. - I could never forget the puppeteer and, above all, the little girl Lisei. Many years went by - but fate must have sent Lisei across my path - poor, worried about her sick father, and still travelling from town to town. Now I discovered that I had been in love with her all these many years. We married and she came to my house with her sick father. The happy ending was the beginning of a new generation of artists as they are still working nowadays in Hohenhamein. - Pole Poppenspaler is one of us, let his little puppets dance!

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