00Q. [Rare Set of Stories with Over 20 Antisemitic Cartoons from Nazi Germany] Stoll, Otto. Illustrations by H. Heyne

DIE FÖRSTERBUBEN UND ANDERES ... "GEPFEFFERTES": NUR FÜR NATÜRLICH EMPFINDENDE MENSCHEN [AND] DER FRÜHLING UND ANDERES-- "GEPFEFFERTES!": NUR FÜR NATÜRLICH EMPFINDENDE MENSCHEN [TWO VOLUMES. COMPLETE, NO MORE ISSUED]

Neudamm & Berlin: Munz & Co [Försterbuben]; and J. Neumann [Frühling], 1940-1941. Item #43392

No Date [1940-1941?] Both 1st edition. Original color illustrated boards, 4to, 70 + 68 pages. Filled with color illustrations, over 20 of them stereotyped Antsemitic cartoon images. 25 cm. In German, in Sütterlin script. The titles translate loosely as “The Spring and Other ‘Spicy’ Stories-- Only for People Sensitive to Nature” and “The Forest Boys and Other ‘Spicy’ Stories-- Only for People Sensitive to Nature.” Text printed in red and black.
Both volumes were printed in Neudamm by Neumann, but interestingly, Försterbuben, the first volume, shows an overlay of the new publisher/distributer “Munz & Co. Verlag, Berlin” on the front cover and title page. Complicated issues around distribution of Försterbuben may be reflected in its present scarcity (OCLC locates only two copies worldwide).
OCLC suggests consecutive dates of 1940 and 1941 for both titles, which makes sense given the use of Sütterlin script (see below) and the presence of the date 1938 or 1939 under the artist's printed signature in several of the drawings.

Most scholars of Nazi-era Antisemitic imagery are familiar with the horribly Antisemitic children' s books Der Giftpilz (The Poison Mushroom) and Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid! (Don't Trust a Fox in a Green Pasture Or a Jew Upon His Oath!) published by Julius Streicher's Stürmer Verlag. These Nazi propaganda books were intended for young people and were published in large printing runs in Nazi Germany.
Lesser known but at least as offensive are these illustrated Nazi-era book for adults by Otto Stoll. Printed and distributed by a far smaller publisher than the Stürmer Verlag, they received smaller press run and appeared in only one edition. Indeed OCLC locates only 2 holdings worldwide for the first volume, Die Försterbuben.
H. Heyne illustrated both works with colorful comic illustrations, which are distributed throughout the text, rendered in with what appear to be the highest quality printing techniques of the day.
Each book includes eight hunting or outdoors stories in verse, two of them in Der Frühling (the second volume) extremely Antisemitic. Intended as humorous, they contain typically ribald German hunting humor, with immediately recognizable tropes from German culture.

Interestingly, these stories were published just in the final two years of official use of period Sütterlin cursive script, which was popular during the early Nazi period and was used, for example, in Der Giftpilz and Trau keinem Fuchs. Indeed, “In 1935, the Sütterlin style officially became the only German script taught in schools.”
Then, however, “In 1941 [the probable year of publication of the second work], the Nazi Party banned all ‘broken’ (fraktur, ‘blackletter’) typefaces, including Sütterlin, and replaced them with Italian-style lettering, such as the Antiqua typeface class. From the academic year 1941/42 onwards, only the so-called Normalschrift (‘normal script’), which had hitherto been taught alongside Sütterlin under the name of ‘Latin script,’ was allowed to be used and taught” (Wikipedia).
Der Frühling… includes first the virulently Antisemitic illustrated tale of Max Isidor Veilchenblau (the last name means the color violet in German, implying strangeness and, perhaps, effeminacy), a wealthy Jewish businessman who wanted to be a hunter. Max Isidor owns a big house on the edge of a forest where he lives with his wife Rosalinda.

Under Heyne’s colorful drawing of a synagogue with big flashy sports cars coming and going and stereotyped Jewish men greeting each other, we are told that Veilchenblau has told his wife that he has hunting plans, but he instead takes a beautiful blond Aryan girl out to dinner. A romantic encounter in a secluded cabin in the forest after dinner does not turn out as Max Isidor had planned, and he has to flee stark naked into the woods where is found by his wife and a policeman.
According to the moral of the rhyming text, Jews can never be hunters with a German hunter’s soul (a mythical German masculine ideal), and no amount of money can make them hunters as their Jewish race just doesn't have “hunters’ blood.”

Then, the second illustrated antisemitic story tells of “War-Profiteer Meyer in Crisis”, the tale of a Jew who grew wealthy during World War I (another well-worn Nazi Antisemitic trope) and then has difficulties on a hunting outing with his neighbor, a count, and the count's lovely blond escort.
Both these tales play on an imagined sexual threat of Jewish men to naive but pure Aryan maidens and also reinforce Jewish stereotypes of greed, gluttony, ugliness, and cosmopolitanism.
The wider variety of stories in the books have titles such as: Spring; Hunter Latin; Quiet Retreat; and Hunter Hans and his Dog Kosimar. All are are accompanied by cartoon-like color illustrations of animals, romantic encounters in the woods, hunters in trouble with the tax authorities, and of course hunters who are drinking, experiencing hunting mishaps, encountering misdeeds with chimneys and fireplaces, getting in trouble while hunting, farting, etc.
Since these are otherwise low-brow humorous stories, they illustrate how ethnic stereotyping and insinuations of racialized moral and physical inferiority–in this case Antisemitic–can be so easily integrated into the standard literature of a culture. The centering of the Jewish characters into two of these stories turns them into the kinds of standard racist jokes that teach and reinforce important racial ideas and hierarchies in the society.
At the rear is advertising for other humorous books published by Neumann Publishing company.

OCLC listings match the author with an Otto Stoll who was a Swiss ethnographer and Mayanist who died in 1922, 20 years before this book was first published, which we find unlikely.
A copy of Der Frühling by itself sold at auction in 2018 for over $900, with the description noting, “The very high production standard of this book belies its vile content.” The US Holocaust Memorial Museum keeps their copy in their Rare Book Collection. The much rarer Die Försterbuben has never appeared at any major book auction.
SUBJECT(S): German wit and humor. Jews -- Germany -- Caricatures and cartoons. Humour allemand. Juifs -- Allemagne -- Caricatures et dessins humoristiques. Anti-Jewish propaganda.

Der Frühling… is OCLC: 843226193/72649783/250322204, with OCLC locating only 9 copies worldwide, the majority in Germany, none at NLI, and only 3 in North America (UFlorida, USHMM, UUtah), none at any Ivy League institution.
Die Försterbuben… is OCLC 700497520, with OCLC locating only 2 copies anywhere worldwide (Sachsische Landesbibliothek & LBI). It is extremely rare.

Both volumes show only very slight wear, an excellent set of this rare and important example of Nazi-era German mass-culture Antisemitism. (B) (holo2-163-26A-XX).

Price: $2,500.00