The Wind Tells about Valdemar Daae and His Daughters by Hans Christian Andersen. Short summary

5 seconds

Waldemar Do was a rich nobleman. But he dreamed of obtaining gold through alchemy — and went broke. His three daughters became beggars. Anna Dorthea outlived them all, thanks to a stork she had once saved.

1 minute

Wind tells the story of the Doe family. Waldemar was a wealthy nobleman. There were feasts rolled up in his castle. Mr. Do’s wife and their daughters, Ida, Johanna and Anna Dorthea, wore brocade and velvet.
Valdemar’s wife passed away, leaving the three girls orphaned.

The feudal lord decided to build a warship to sell to the king. To do this, he ordered the entire forest to be cut down, and even more so in the spring, when the birds were sitting on their nests. The older girls laughed as they heard the feathered parents screaming in the sky, mourning their chicks.

It was only Anna Dorthea who stood up for them. She asked them not to cut down the oak tree where the stork’s nest was.

But the deal with the king did not work out. The ship was left to rot ashore. Then Valdemar Do became interested in alchemy. He spent his entire fortune on experiments and mortgaged the castle.

Valdemar Do and his daughters moved into a cabin. Ida married a peasant. Johanna disguised herself as a lad and hired herself as a sailor on a ship.

They all died. And only Anna Dorthea was left to live in a dilapidated hut, which was sheltered from the weather not by a roof, but by a stork’s nest.