E.T.A. Hoffmann's fairy tale “Das fremde Kind” (“The Strange Child,” 1817) is one of Hoffmann's lesser known texts and has received only marginal scholarly attention. The underexamined fairy tale “Das fremde Kind” opens up new insights into Hoffmann's innovative representation of transgressive playfulness, which entails a multifaceted critique of both Enlightenment and early Romantic ideas of creativity and imagination. Hoffmann's fairy tale endorses imaginative ludic experiences because they allow for creative transgressions of societal limitations. However, the text is also a warning against the uncanny dangers of unmediated transgressions into the ambiguous imaginary. The study of ludic elements in “Das fremde Kind” draws attention to its critique of Enlightenment rationalism and philistine materialism with their aversion to imaginary playfulness, and it reveals a late-Romantic critique of the dangers of losing oneself in the fantastic. The tension between the benefits and dangers of transgressive imaginary play is resolved by transposing it into the liminal dream sphere, which offers an unrestricted creative space between everyday reality and the realm of the fantastic.

In Hoffmann's “Das fremde Kind,” artificiality and automation appear as negative principles that threaten transgressive play. The protagonists of the fairy tale are two children, the siblings Felix and Christlieb von Brakel, who receive automated and artificial toys as presents from their aristocratic relatives. Their uncle, Count Cyprianus von Brakel, and his family bring the toys with them from the city when they come for a visit to the idyllic rural village where Felix and Christlieb are growing up. The relatives are accompanied by a hunter, who functions as a servant; this domesticized hunter reflects how far removed the urban relatives are from rural life and nature. Christlieb and Felix are handed the toys by their stilted cousins Adelgunde and Hermann.