Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué in the context of "Ondine (ballet)"

The Gespensterbuch (literally 'Ghost Book' or 'Book of Spectres') is a collection of German ghost stories written by August Apel and Friedrich Laun and published in seven volumes between 1810 and 1817. Volumes five to seven were also published under the title Wunderbuch ('Book of Wonders'). The final volume was published after Apel's death, with stories by his friends Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and Carl Borromäus von Miltitz. Laun, Fouqué, Miltitz, and Caroline de la Motte Fouqué followed up on the series by publishing another book of ghost stories Aus der Geisterwelt ('From the Spirit-World') (1818).

Undines (/ˈʌndiːnz, ənˈdiːnz/; also ondines) are a category of elemental beings associated with water, stemming from the alchemical writings of Paracelsus. Later writers developed the undine into a water nymph in its own right, and it continues to live in modern literature and art through such adaptations as Danish Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 "The Little Mermaid" and the 1811 novella Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué.