Der Erlkoenig (The Elf King)

Minneapolis illustrator Richard Holzschuh produced this drawing at the request of his friend Marie Dyregrov, about 1945, as a gift for her son David, then entering junior high school. It illustrates Der Erlkoenig (The Elf King), a poem by the famous German Romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1747–1832). The dramatic tale focuses on a father who rides through the night bearing his ailing son in his arms. The father sense’s the boy’s fear and asks why he is scared. The son says that he sees the Elf King in the sky, but the father replies that it is just the mist or some tree branches. The boy hears the Elf King’s entreaties to join him in splendor and joy, but the father refuses to believe. By the end of the poem, the Elf King impatiently seizes the boy, and as the father reaches home, he realizes that his son is dead.