SOURCE: "Peter Schlemihl" in Surveys and Soundings in European Literature, Princeton University Press, 1966, pp 208-22.

In the following essay, originally published in 1965, Weigand offers a thematic analysis of Peter Schlemihl, interpreting the work as a tongue-in-cheek satire on "salesmanship and business ethics."

Peter Schlemihl, an immortal classic that charmed the reading public of Europe and America on its first appearance a century and a half ago, is the story of a man who got involved with the devil by selling him his shadow. That so great a poet as Hugo von Hofmannsthal nevertheless chose to omit it from his collection, Deutsche Erzähler, is due, I believe, not to any deficiencies on Chamisso's part, but rather to Hofmannsthal's own deep involvement with the motif of the shadow and its symbolism along totally divergent lines as developed in his Die Frau ohne Schatten, the text of Richard Strauss's opera...