Das hässliche
Entlein

The mother duck hatches her eggs: one, two, three, four, five ducklings hatch. Only the sixth egg, which is large and heavy, simply refuses to crack open. Impatient and already thoroughly annoyed, the mother duck sits on the egg for another day. And sure enough: at last, the last duckling hatches! But it is completely different from its siblings. It is far too big, far too clumsy, far too grey – and, in the eyes of the other ducks, terribly ugly. And so they tease it whenever they can. It is pushed, bitten and made the laughing stock of the whole duck yard. In its sheer distress, the poor little duckling no longer knows where to turn.

On its long journey, it meets many different animals in a poor farmer’s cottage, but nobody accepts it just as it is. Everyone wants something from the duckling that it doesn’t like or can’t do. Yet all the ugly duckling really wants to do is simply swim in the water all day long. Because it feels so lonely, it ventures further and further out into the world. Surely there must be animals somewhere who understand it and like it just the way it is …

The story of the ugly duckling, which transforms into a beautiful white swan at the end of its adventures, is one of Hans Christian Andersen’s best-known fairy tales – a touching story about exclusion and belonging.