Johann Peter Hebel, a schoolmaster and churchman, scarcely saw himself as a born poet or writer of genius and stood aside from German Classicism and Romanticism, the literary movements of his time. Yet Goethe's admiration for his Allemannische Gedichte (Alemannic Poems, 1803; translated as Rhymes from the Rhineland, 1913) as the product of an imagination delightfully uncorrupted by modern civilization set the seal on the reputation Hebel earned as Germany's greatest dialect poet. In the southwest corner of Germany, Switzerland, and Alsace, where Alemannic is spoken, he is treasured as Robert Burns is by the Scots. Yet any reader familiar with standard German has little difficulty in understanding and appreciating his poetry. Hebel won equal fame as a prose writer. His short tales in Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes (Treasury of the Rhinelanders' Family Friend, 1811) became popular classics throughout Germany and were well known in prerevolutionary Russia too. They...