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Klingspor Kalendar 1925

1925 Kalender für das Jahr 1925 (Cover: Klingspor Kalender 1925). Gedruckt und herausgegeben von Gebr. Klingspor. Holzstiche von Willi Harwerth. Hardbound. Offenbach am Main: Gedruckt und herausgegeben von Gebr. Klingspor. €12 from Antiquariaat Engel, Stuttgart, August, '09.

This book represents one of the best finds of an extended stay in Europe. During a one-day trip to Stuttgart, Ursula Kuhn and I headed for the bookshops on Alexanderstrasse. I soon recognized the territory and remembered Antiquariaat Engel and its place above a store for new books. No one was there to help. I found little, and checked "Neue Eingänge" before I left, knowing that chances of finding something were very small. Out popped this Klingspor Kalender. I recognized it immediately because of the 1933 calendar featured in Anne Hobbs' Fables, a calendar I found by luck on eBay five years ago. This hardbound book is slightly larger than the 1933 edition, about 5½" x7¾." It begins with poems on the four seasons and then offers a page for each month. Each month has an astronomical sign at the top. Each month features four or five small figures representing saints or feasts. Do not miss Salome on October 24th! The Sundays are printed in red, and phases of the moon noted. There follow then two pages of fables: Lessing's "Der Besitzer des Bogens," Ernst's "Eine harmlose Geschichte," and Luther's "Gewalt" or LS. Then come seven verse selections, all either fables or very close to fables. The first is Pfeffel's good story of the grainfield where only one stalk raises its head. That is the stalk without fruit; all the others are bowed down by their good fruit. One of the seven, of anonymous authorship, is even titled "Eine Fabel." When King Lion locks up the bear who had censored people's writing, he found that making everyone into writers only produced confusion. "Let the bear go free!" The images are exquisite. Here they are all colored, by contrast with the copy I have from 1933. What a find! Formerly in the possession of Joachim Butterling.