Otfried Preußler was born Otfried Syrowatka in Reichenberg in northern Bohemia in 1923. He belonged to the first Sudeten German generation, whose childhood was characterised by the ethnic struggle and – from 1938 – by National Socialism. Being a storyteller, Preußler was convinced that there was a connection between the stories and the storyteller’s personal life story. The extent to which this also applies to his own stories has not yet been investigated. The article thus offers a new reading of the three volumes of the Der kleine Wassermann (The Little Water-Sprite, 1956), Die kleine Hexe (The Little Witch, 1957) and Das kleine Gespenst (The Little Ghost, 1966). According to the thesis of this article, in these texts, Preußler uses a concealed form of writing to express his childhood and early youth experiences, for which the term camouflage is chosen for heuristic reasons.