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an open book with a drawing of an elephant on it ' s coveran open book with a drawing of a bird on it
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1271 - Rowohlt, Ernst
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Estimate €500 - €750
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Description
Rowohlt, Ernst Blei, Franz The Great Bestiary of Modern Literature. With 6 hand-coloured lithographs by O. Gulbransson, Th.Th. Heine and R. Großmann. Berlin, Rowohlt, 1922. 252 pp. (Modern) dark brown leather binding on 5 bands with some wear and gold-stamped title on the spine First (public) edition. – One of 400 numbered copy of edition B. – With a handwritten dedication by Rowohlt to ‘To my dear Henry, Christmas 1922’ (presumably to his son Heinrich Maria, then aged 14). ‘The Great Bestiarium of Modern Literature’ is Bleis’s best-known and most influential work: an expanded new edition of his ‘Bestiarium Literaricum, that is, a precise description of the animals of literary Germany’, originally published in Munich in 1920 under the pseudonym ‘Dr Peregrin Steinhövel’. In alphabetical order, Blei portrays all the major authors of his time in the form of mocking, ironic animal allegories – including caricatures such as ‘K. Einstein’, ‘Das Gehauptmann’ (Gerhart Hauptmann), ‘Die Hesse’ (Hermann Hesse), ‘Der Lasker-Schüler’, ‘Der Thomasmann und der Heinrichmann’ (Thomas and Heinrich Mann) and ‘WedeKind’ – thereby establishing his literary reputation as a sharp-tongued, highly educated chronicler of the literary scene in Germany and Austria. It is also noteworthy that the text in the appendix includes an essay by Robert Musil on the biological concepts of culture and civilisation, which underlines the close interconnection between Bleis’s satirical bestiary and the literary discourse of his time. Of particular value is Ernst Rowohlt’s handwritten Christmas dedication: “To my dear Henry, Christmas 1922”, with which the publisher presented his own, recently published prestige project to his son Heinrich Maria Rowohlt as a festive gift – a direct, biographically grounded testimony to the dual significance this book held for Rowohlt, both as a publisher and as a father.
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About the sale Valuable books, prints, historical photographs
Auction location
Auction time 10/24/2026 at 10:00 AM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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