Agnes Miegel, who wrote the most gripping ballads in early modern German literature, started her career as a poet but later turned to writing short prose works. Her poems and stories appeared in every German school reader and are still being published in new collections. Miegel was deeply rooted in her birthplace, the"Bernstein Küste" (coast of the amber stone) along the Baltic Sea, and her beloved city of Künigsberg (now Kaliningrad, U.S.S.R.). This easternmost corner of the German Empire provides the setting for much of her work, which portrays the magic of its people, its history, and its myths. She was thought of as the voice and heart of East Prussia.

Agnes Miegel was born in Königsberg on 9 March 1879 to Gustav Adolf and Helene Wilhelmina Miegel. She was the only child of a middle-class merchant and grew up...