Volksbuch

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Folk books, 5: Story of the beautiful Magelone , ed. by G. O. Marbach (Leipzig: Wigand, 1838–1849)

Volksbuch is a term introduced by Joseph Görres and Johann Gottfried von Herder towards the end of the 18th century for histories and popular writings read since the Middle Ages , which were usually written in prose . This includes old stories, romantic adventures, folk sagas , fairy-tale legends and rascals . Some of the origins are knight poems , minne songs and local events. Mostly, originally rhymed forms were dissolved in prose, written in the popular way and distributed.

A more neutral term for the field to be covered with the word Volksbuch would be “lower market of early printing”. Neither specific substances nor a uniform origin characterize the titles of this market. The historical production, which in the 19th century was problematically only partially covered by the “people's books”, offers, especially in language, typography and illustration, a typical visual design compared to offers on the upscale book market. With this design, it had its own (but changed significantly between 1450 and 1800) customer demands.

Famous subjects in this area were later literary adaptations by Charles De Coster and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the stories of Till Eulenspiegel and the account of the life of the black artist Johann Georg Faust .

history

1460–1580: Histories versus learned literature

Page from the German version of the Melusinen history (Augsburg: Johann Bämler, 1474). The print edition tells again how the handwritten template came about as a commissioned work.

The pressure creates new markets

A retrospective assessment of the phenomenon of popular books is difficult, since the book market of early printing in the area of ​​history and fiction lacks the differentiation that one expects from a critical examination since the 17th century.

The print, which was made around 1450, initially promised better, more evenly designed, error-free texts of great prestige, as they were of interest to libraries. The Gutenberg Bible testifies to this claim. Second, print immediately proved to be a medium through which the public could be created: committed theologians and preachers traveling across the country used the press to personally bring their own theses into discussion. The Reformation unfolded with the new medium. In the res publica literaria (the scientific community), printing turned out to be a way of reaching the professional world across borders (people wrote in Latin on the international book market). Duplication eliminated errors in standard works that crept in through copying, it created internationally distributed standard editions of important texts from law and theology - here, printing ensured quality increases and the personal responsibility of those who presented texts with a new science of textual criticism .

Histories get cheap with the pressure

A third area of ​​the book market emerged (compared to that of theological and political controversies and that of the res publica literaria) with the "histories", in the broadest sense of the word, reporting texts. Above all, printing made titles easily accessible, for which there was already a broad demand on the manuscript market. In monasteries and by professional copyists, what could be hoped for sales, especially in the cities, had been produced for a long time for the commercial market: religious edification, histories (especially references to the legendary world and the world of knights), practical books in popular areas such as astrology and Medicine. The titles that circulated in manuscripts in order to be copied if necessary and designed for the individual customer according to his wishes could suddenly be produced in hundreds of copies cheaply in advance with early printing. All the printer needed was a usable template that he could even pass on after the set. As a result, the printed histories created an above all cheaper market compared to the valuable individual manuscripts. In this field, it was typical to deal with illustrations: They could be reused like the letters in the text and were not even designed to be more individual. If there was a duel in the text, a love confession between a knight and a woman, a knight's fight with a dangerous animal, a battle, a siege - the once-made illustration could be reused as often as desired in comparable places, in the same book or in the next similar subject. Histories could not be distributed arbitrarily until now because production was too expensive. Now it was possible to save on typography, illustration, paper and binding in mass production. With the histories, a cheap market segment was created.

Two pages from an English edition of John Mandeville's Travels (Ethiopia and India) printed in 1499, depicting an insole showing how to find shade under his large foot in the heat. The book had spread in manuscripts for over 100 years.

Authors were certainly in demand in the cheap market, but did not take shape as opinion leaders and living people as in the fields of theology and science. In the historical typeface market segment, the readership was looking for authors more as authorities, as venerable labels, as guarantors for texts that other readers had just read. The names that spread in this field from Aristotle to Jehan de Mandeville played a completely different role than their successors did in the cultural life that established itself in the 19th century. They did not appear in bookstores with novel readings, were hardly recorded as biographical, often remained pure venerable names to which writings were assigned by the publishers in order to make them easier to sell.

A differentiation into fictional and non-fictional fonts was omitted in the emerging market segment of lower historical fonts. The books that customers were looking for here either had practical value, for example with religious or medical instructions, or they were openly written to "surprise". “Wondrous histories” were produced (similar to how it can be said for the Hollywood period films, which from Alexander the Great to the Knights of the Middle Ages took over the subject matter of this production) without triggering an expert discussion or a discussion of the truthfulness.

Language was largely treated carelessly in the new market segment. Prose prevailed because it could be read more practically and fluently than verse, also because (unlike verse) it allowed any modernization - most of the languages ​​of Europe underwent a massive change in language, which only now became halfway through the written fixation Standstill came.

The materials in the emerging lower market segment came with the text templates predominantly from the manuscript market. New subjects were added with “funny” and “terrifying” reports such as those about Till Eulenspiegel or the magician Johann Georg Faust . The latter clearly shows how the new market was being worked: the author, who compiled the traditional reports on Faust for the Frankfurt publisher Johann Spies in 1587, furnished his book with lively scenes of the devil's encounters, of which there could be no traditional and testified reports ; he claimed to have obtained some things from Faust's letters and legacies, but actually wrote unmarked passages from long-standing reports such as Schedel 's Schedelsche Weltchronik or the Elucidarium , which both instruct and entertain. The cuts were made carelessly and without even considering the current state of knowledge. Even less was there an attempt in the book to show how it was made and to separate facts from fiction. Faust may well have lived there - the reports of legendary heroes who came next to the market, however, like his, were brought onto the market as "wondrous" true histories.

1530–1770: In contrast to the belles lettres

Faust book (Frankfurt: Johann Spies, 1587)

Books for everyone?

The cheap histories market has been largely ignored by the learned world. In the lower segment, books appeared in the vernacular. It is unclear today who could read anything. In the early modern era, writing skills were required for anyone who wanted to create invoices or record income and take orders in their own business. As far as can be seen, reading skills spread much further with pressure - regardless of the ability to write. In the cities, this should have ensured as early as the 17th century that at least one resident was able to read in almost every household. In the country, the ability to read is likely to have been reserved for officials and pastors. It was enough if someone in the village could write letters and read from the newspapers. The reading aids, which were produced together with cheap books for simple customers, suggest, however, that at least selected children were given lessons in rural areas. Individual pages with our father (a well-known and therefore easily decipherable text) and learning to spell the individual letters were popular. It remains unclear whether fathers taught their sons or ministers taught more gifted children here. In any case, one could learn to read without ever having to write.

Another question in today's research is the high price of books. Books were expensive, but not necessarily something to be avoided - they were luxury items that you spent money on (perhaps similar to what you do today for travel and consumer electronics). The existence of traders who traveled around with small vendor's shops ( colportage trade is the later word), points to the wide sales of books in the early modern period.

In the course of the 17th century, sales channels for the cheaper goods emerged. Traders in smaller towns produced them in a crude manner. In big cities like London, separate stores established themselves with their own range of products for the common customer who expected a full market segment, with books that have been reprinted and reissued almost unchanged since the beginning of printing and with newer titles that one heard about.

Not for everyone: the elegant belles lettres

A change in the positioning of the lower market occurred with the appearance of the " belles lettres " in the course of the 16th century. Gargantua and Pantagruel appeared in several volumes between 1532 and 1552: a satire on the cheap hero histories of the lower market segment - the lush history of grotesque giants, which, despite all the coarseness of the representations, found its audience clearly among the educated readers who alone decipher the learned allusions could (and had the money for the several volumes). A second market success in the field of belles lettres was the Amadis in the 16th century , a chivalric novel for which the delicacy of its style was to advertise - and which immediately divided its readers into followers and despisers. The latter, up to Cervantes, who wrote his Don Quixote against his predecessor, missed good taste here as much as a clear awareness of the fictionality of the subject.

Around the year 1600, an area had developed between the market for low books and that of “literature” (the high learned publications), which was determined by style and by authors who mainly wrote under pseudonyms and who set fashions with taste.

In the area of ​​the lower market, the readers became aware that the elegant middle market of belles lettres as well as the learned market of literature remained closed to them. The belles lettres' books had “long” and “beautiful” sentences, their typeface was fine, their illustrations in copper engraved according to the latest fashion; All in all, they were generally up to three times as expensive as the book, which offered the same material shortened from old templates and with a miserable print image. Low-market books tended to stick to materials that had been read for centuries, but there were exceptions - deliberate takeovers of materials from the belles lettres segment . In retrospect, they are interesting because they reveal the hurdles that have now existed in the entire market. Robinson Crusoe was an instant hit in the elegant market in 1719. A cheap version came out immediately as an "abridg'd version". The title proudly informed the customer that he was offered a modified version: "faithfully Abridg'd, in which not one remarkable Circumstance is omitted", it said on the title page of the arrangement. Other cheap editions openly promised to be more understandable than the elegant modern models: At Boddington, the publisher of the Pilgrim's Progress (an allegorical religious life from the cheap segment), one could also purchase the Don Quixote in English: “contracted from the Original, the Conceits sharpned, and so much in a little Compass, that in reading it, you will find nothing worthy of note omitted […] the Quality or Quintessence of all more refined and corrected than any since Don Quixote began to speak Languages ​​different from that of Spain. ”The publisher bluntly addressed readers who were aware of their limited terminology and were only partially ashamed of it. The fairy tales of Comtesse Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy offered in the elegant edition fairy tales with artistic courtly morals. The cheap edition was bought in 1716 from Ebenezer Tracy on London Bridge with his own reference to the distance that had developed between the markets - the translator:

I did not attempt this with a Design to follow exactly the French Copy, nor have any regard to our English Translation; which to me, are both tedious and irksome. Nor have I begun some of it many years since: But to make it portable for your walking Diversion, and less Chargeable: and chiefly to set aside the Distances of Sentences and Words, which not only dissolve the Memory, but keep the most nice and material intrigues, from a close connexion.
I did not undertake this with the aim of following the French edition exactly, nor did I pay any attention to our English version, both of which I find tedious and annoying. The work did not extend over years. For the book, which can be taken anywhere for entertainment and is not that expensive, I instead reduced the spaces between sentences and words a little. This not only relieves the memory, it also keeps the stories together much more clearly. [Trans. os]

What was classified as “folk books” in the 19th century, as a field of books that came from the people, will be better understood than a production that the book trade adapted to a special group of customers who in turn saw themselves cut off from fashions, felt a lack of comprehension and who at most wanted to acquire more from time to time than the titles that had been part of household books for centuries.

Without claim to style: the lower market

Rough design and a text that has been on the market since 1598.
Geronimo Fernandez: The Honor of Chivalry, or The Famous and Delectable History of Don Bellianis of Greece (London: JS, ca.1715 )

While there was hardly any interest in the more precise classification of fictionality in the early printing, this had changed fundamentally with the market of belles lettres , which was shaped by scandalous memoirs and politically explosive novels.

The lower market learned nothing of the same change in customer interest. Jehan de Mandeville's travel still sold with all since the 14th century known entanglements of travelogue, biblical history and coarse lies as that of the Einfüßlern that should live in Ethiopia and among the highly stretched own leg in the rain as sun protection sought.

Knight histories offered adventures like today's comics in brutal brevity, including outdated, but abundant and crude illustrations - a text sample from an English title in this market: The Honor of Chivalry (Dublin: L. Dillon [around 1720]). A wild lion leaps at the imperial hunting party. The young hero must strike him down. A bear has already rushed out and taken the hero's cousin under his arm. The bear is already rushing over the hills with its prey. Bellianis has no choice but to free himself from the lion fight and, seriously injured, to ride after the fleeing bear; Reading that particularly attracted young readers:

“The Lion ran straight against the Prince, who although it somewhat scared him, did not therefore fear him, but with an undaunted Heart set himself, before him with his Sword in his hand, which at his side he wore, but the Lion joyned with him so suddenly, that he wounded him sorely in the Forehead, and gripping him between his Arms, thrust one of his Paws into his Flesh making a deep Wound: But the Prince not dismayed hereat, nor losing his couragious Mind, gave such a Thrust from his arms downward, right to his heart, that the lion through extream Pain left him. Then looking toward the Empress, saw that the Bear with devilish Fury, having overthrown the Prince his Cousin, against which his great strength nothing prevailed, dragged him over the Mountain Tops: which he seeing although grieveously wounded, and the Lion not stirring straight took his Horse, and with all Speed ​​followed the Way the Bear had taken, not respecting the many Knights that went in his Rescue, nor the Empress's Out-cries for bidding his Enterprize, fearing he should faint throught the much Blood he had lost by his Wounds , But counterposing all these things with the great Love he bare his cousin, stayed not, but in all haste thrust himself into those great and thick Groves. "

(See the Roman article for illustrations of more elegant covers of the belles lettres .)

Width of the low supply

The offer had to meet the uneducated clientele's own book needs. Sometimes pages with book advertisements, which are added to titles, give an overview of the market segment. The following list, reproduced in extracts, can be found over five pages at the end of the Seven Famous Champions of Christendom (London: T. Norris, 1719) - the last lines provide information about the special customers of this product:

History of Reynard the Fox.
––––––– of Fortunatus.
––––––– of the Kings and Queens of England.
Aristotle's master piece.
The Pleasures of Matrimony.
Cabinet of Wit.
The Wars of the Jews.
The History of the Jews.
The History of Parism.
The Book of Knowledge.
Hart's sermons.
Po [!] She of Prayer.
A token for Mariners.
Bunyan's Sighs of Hell.
Savior's Sermons of the Mount, 1st and 2d Parts.
Dyers Works.
[...]
Whole Duty of Man.
[…]
Bunyan's bar Fig-tree.
––––––– Good news.
––––––– Solomon's Temple.
––––––– Excellency of a broken heart.
––––––– Come and Welcome.
––––––– Good news.
––––––– Grace Abounding.
––––––– Heavenly Foot-man.
––––––– Advocateship.
Book of Palmistry
Dutch Fortune-teller, folio.
Cambridge Jests.
[…]
Guide to the Altar.
History of the seven Wise Masters.
––––––– seven Wise Masters.
Lambert of Cattle.
[…]
London Spelling Book.
Mother's Blessing.
Man's Treachery to Women.
Practice of the Faithful.
Quacker's Academy.
Rochester's Poems.
Reynold's Murder.
–––––––– Adultery.
School of Recreation.
Art of Dying.
D [o] ctrine of the Bible.

At the afore-mentioned Place, all Country Chapmen may be furnished with all Sorts of Bibles, Commonprayers, Testaments, Psalters, Primers and Horn-books ; Likewise all sorts of three Sheets Histories, Penny Histories, and Sermons; and Choice of new and old Ballads, at reasonable rates.

Till Eulenspiegel ,
German edition around 1720

The more satirical cross-section at this point for the German market in 1691 is provided by the musician “Battalus”, who in his life story expanded into a novel tells how he dealt with books for other children in the small town where he had to end his education whose parents were not paying enough attention - satire, as the anonymous author also mixes a few colleagues from Johann Beer to Grimmelshausen with the cheap goods, which enjoyed the greatest distribution:

“To put this my resolution [to renounce love and instead study the arts] to work, I asked all of my condiscipulis whether their parents also had books. Who said yes, I asked that they show me the same, do I leave out those that I liked and borrow them, with the firm intention of never giving them back? I also bought a lot from them, for example, for rude money: and I was really happy in this trade, especially at times when all sorts of nibbling could be got on the market, because the Pürschgen needed money for that. In this way I brought together quite a bit of Liberey, but mostly of historical and art books. In a quarter of a year, […] the following authors were already in my catalog: 1. Eulenspiegel teutsch. 2. Eulenspiegel in Latin verse. 3. Clauss fool. 4. Fincken-Ritter. 5. Clauret. 6. Clement Marot. 7. Jean Tambour. 8. Leyer-Maz. 9. Shear violinist. 10. Trolley. 11. Garden Society. 12. Funny company. 13. Master Hildebrand. 14. Cento Novella Bocatii. 15. Cento Novella Giraldi. 16. Don Kichote. 17. Funny Kurtzweil. 18. From Fortunati Seckel and wishing hats. 19. From the son Thumbnail. 20. From Eurialo and Lucretia. 21. Landstörtzer Gusmann. 22. Landstörtzerin Justina. 23. Lazarillo. 24. Simplicius simplicissimus. 25. Jump into the field. 26. Courage. 27. Wonderful bird's nest, first part. 27. Ejusdem other part. 28. Fools Hospital. 29. Ritter Hopffen-Sack. Jan 30 Rebhu. 31. The little tailor. 32. Flying Wanderer. 33. Stoltzer Melcher. 34. From the first bearskin. 35th Beard War. 36. German truth. 37. Frogworm. 38. Of the seven masters. 39. From Keyser Octavio and his sons. 40. Bag-cutter histories. 41. Güldner donkey. 42. Güldner dog. 43. From Hertzog Ernst. 44. From the beautiful Magalona. 45. Drey Ertz fools. 46. ​​Drey smartest people. 47. Political nibbler. 48. Political mole monkey. 49. Political Colica. 50. Political fire wall sweeper. 51. Political stockfish. 52. Political Roast Turner. 53. Political Toback brother. 54. Winter nights. 55. Philander von Sittewald. 56. Rogue upon rascal. 57. Amadis in 24th volumes. 59. Virgin pastime. 60. Rubezal. 61. Cat Veit. 62. Female hackle. 63. Kluncker-Mutz. 64. Jungfer planer. 65. France. Among the art books, as far as I can remember, were the following: 1. New art booklet. 2. Hoccus Pocus or Pocket Game. 3. The Simplicii Gauckel's pocket. 4. From glass grinding. 5. Illuminir book. 6. From Mahler's art. 7. Gradir art. 8. Mirror art. 9. Magia Naturalis. 10. Cryptographia. 11. Calligraphy. 12. Of fireworks. 13. Mathematical Erqvick Lessons. 14. Hero treasure. 15. De Sigilis. 16. Occulta Philosophia. 17. Arbatel. 18. De Curâ Magneticâ. 19. From gold making. 20. Fallopii art book. 21. Of solar clocks. 22. Magia Optica, and others which I now dislike. I studied these books very diligently, and I particularly liked the book by Feuer-Wercken. "

1770–1840: Folk books become national literature

At the end of the 17th century, a range of classics emerged in the belles lettres market (for more information, see the article Canon (literature) ). In the last passages of the historical overview, Pierre Daniel Huet's Traitté de l'origine des romans (1670) still formulated contempt for the lower area, which was just found in the production of the novel. There should be classics in the high market segment, from Heliodor's novels to Don Quixote ; the lower had nothing to do with the novel:

“I shall not undertake to […] examine whether Amadis de Gaul were originally from Spain, Flanders, or France; and whether the Romance of Tiel Ulespiegel be a Translation from the German ; or in what Language the Romance of the Seven Wise Men of Greece was first written; or that of Dolopathos , which some say was extracted from the Parables of Sandaber the Indian . Some say 'tis to be found in Greek in some Libraries; which has furnished the Matter of an Italian Book call'd Erastus, (and of many of Boccace his Novels, as the same Fauchet has remarked) which was written in La -
<137> tin by John Morck , or the Abby de Hauteselne , where of Ancient Copies are to be seen; and translated into French by the Clerk Hubert , about the End of the Twelfth Age, and into High Dutch about Three Hundred Years afterwards; and an Hundred Years after that, from High Dutch into Latin again, by a Learned hand, who changed the Names of it, and was ignorant that the Dutch had come from the Latin . "

“It shall suffice if I tell you, that all these Works which Ignorance has given Birth to, carried along with them the Marks of their Original, and were no other than a Complication of
<138> Fictions, grossly cast together in the greatest Confusion , and infinitely short of the Excellent Degree of Art and Elegance, to which the French Nation is now arrived in Romances. 'Tis truly a Subject of Admiration, that we, who have yielded to others the Bays for Epic Poetry, and History, have nevertheless advanced these to so high a Perfection, that the Best of theirs are not Equal to the Meanest of ours ”

This assessment changed at the end of the 18th century among German intellectuals who built up the area of ​​German national literature and furnished it with tradition, a field of works of art that would henceforth be discussed in schools and in the feature pages. In their perspective there was the lower narrative literature and the belles lettres (the "beautiful literature"), and from both the new line of tradition had to be put together. (See the article Literature for more details .)

From the belles lettres the international mass market developed inexorably, which continues to this day with fiction . The literary scholarship of the early 19th century looked for works from a significant national tradition that could be interpreted in this market. Here the lower books seemed far more interesting than the fashionable titles according to the French and, more recently, English taste of modernism. The discovery of the “Volksbuch” was a particular German desideratum: some of the titles went back to medieval epics. Among intellectuals of the Romantic period , they proved that the people retained a memory for the original material and maintained a connection to precisely the Middle Ages , which has just been established as a guarantor of tradition in German historiography (see the article Canon (German literature) for more details ). The French and English, on the other hand, decidedly based their own culture on antiquity and had comparatively little use for the Middle Ages as a national epoch.

The editions of "chapbooks" that emerged in the 19th century scientific interest should provide the loss of cultural roots stop and found their frames in much larger effort in which the collections of fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and the collections of " folk songs compiled" who finally were the inspiration for the naming of the “Volksbuch”. Subsequent literary research presented the new terminology and the first interpretations of the phenomenon with considerable problems.

Criticism of the literary term "Volksbuch"

The term "Volksbuch" and the classification of literary texts in this category are considered problematic for the following reasons:

  • Folk books did not arise out of the people. They emerged after printing made it possible to bring books to the market at a lower price as a cheap market segment compared to the primary manuscript market.
  • Folk books do not fall back on a volkish legacy. In the first phase they were compiled from manuscripts, they have text traditions and they were produced in a second production field compared to books of the belles lettres for the public with less financial means and limited reading comprehension.
  • Folk books are not a field restricted to narrative literature. Your production should be recorded with a view to the visual design and sales channels: Here a separate market with its own entertainment, its own theology, its own science and its own practical instructions for the simple reader was created.
  • Folk books are not a field of primarily national traditions: the goods sold here had an international character from the start. Titles that were added later, such as the German Faustbuch or Till Eulenspiegel, found translations in the cheap international market segment.
  • The popular books, if they did not come from the people, to be viewed as a “literary field of experimentation” (compare with this interpretation) is problematic: This alleged field of experimentation ultimately emerged as a distinction from the lower market with the field of belles lettres - as an elegant alternative to the lower books. The field of folk books has a tradition dating back to the time of the manuscript market; it took up its modes of production, "compiling" - writing together - instead of creation by an author striving for art. In the end, text versions of the early printing survived in this segment, without any experimentation whatsoever, into the 18th century.

“A book that would like to become a people's book” - Modern People's Books

With the popular book editions of the early 19th century, the boundaries between the relic of the lower book market and the neo-romantic work of art became blurred . Gotthard Oswald Marbach's folk book editions (34 issues, 1838–1842), which made texts from the hitherto trivial market accessible again, appealed to an art-loving audience from 1838 to 1849 with Ludwig Richter's illustrations .

It became interesting again to write new, future “folk books” - said Jeremias Gotthelf with Uli, the servant. A people's book (Berlin: Springer, 1846), Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach with A book that would like to become a people's book (Berlin: Paetel, 1909). Ironically broken, this development continues up to Gerhard Branstner's Die Bommelanten on the journey to the star of the lively. A utopian folk book .

Biographies took up a good portion of the production. In the 19th century, the memorable folk book appeared for every great Prussian king. For Heinrich Pestalozzi , the subtitle was “the hero as a man-maker and educator. Ein Haus- und Volksbuch ”by Ludwig Noack (Leipzig: O. Wigand, 1861). In 1870 the Volksbuch from Count Bismarck by Wolfgang Bernhardi was added. Martin Luther is represented among the heroes of the genre as well as Andreas Hofer , the latter with Andreas Hofer and his comrades in arms. A youth and folk book by Hans Schmölzer (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1900).

The production was predominantly political, with Ehrenreich Eichholz talking about his fate of a proletarian. A Volksbuch (Leipzig, 1846) remained an exception. Folk books tended to have a German national tendency with titles like To France! The French War of 1870 and 1871. A folk book with illustrations , by a Rhinelander (Kreuznach, 1871) or Our Fleet. A folk book for young and old by Captain Lutz (Potsdam: A. Stein, 1898).

The large number of self-confessed folk books appeared between 1920 and 1945. A high point of production was in the early years of the “Third Reich”, when the word folk book stood for defiant anti-modernism such as the commitment to modern, popular propaganda.

Georg Schott started this production with the book that became Adolf Hitler's first biography - published again and again: Das Volksbuch vom Hitler (Munich: KH Wiechmann, 1924). The First World War was commemorated in popular books. The coming war received its first popular book in 1933 with Ernst Denckler's air raid protection manual (Berlin: Weber's Handels- u. Verkehrs-Verl., 1933). In the same year, Flieger Ahead appeared! The German book of flying by Richard Schulz in his own publishing house "Deutsches Volksbuch". Before the start of the war, The People's Book of Our Colonies by Paul H. Kuntze (Leipzig: Dollheimer, 1938) went on sale, and in the last days of the war Hans Friedrich Blunck's Das Volksbuch der Sage vom Reich (Prague / Berlin / Leipzig: Noebe, 1944) was published. .

After the Second World War, it made sense to avoid the genre altogether or to revalue it. Otto Gollin's world without war appeared with a pacifist gesture . A reading and folk book for young Europeans . introduced by Axel Eggebrecht (Düsseldorf: Komer-Verl., 1948). Brockhaus-Verlag took the term more neutral in Der Gesundheits-Brockhaus. People's book on people and practical medicine, ... instructions for first aid in emergencies and a model of the internal organs (Wiesbaden: E. Brockhaus, 1956). The gesture of educating the people through writings tailored to their lesser understanding did not save itself into the 1970s. After its changeful genre history outside of scientific usage (in which it remains oriented towards the early modern period), the word is now usually only broken down ironically and used with a subversive undertone.

Examples of popular books

With year of publication

Without time information

See also

literature

Quoted titles

  • Pierre Daniel Huet : The History of Romances (1670) engl. Stephen Lewi. J. Hooke / T. Caldecott, London 1715.
  • The cheeky Musicant Battalus, or Musicus Curiosus […] from Minermo, Battali's good friends [1691]. J. Chr. Mieth, Freyberg 1714.
  • D'Aulnoy: The History of the Tales of the Fairies. Newly done from the French . E. Tracy, London 1716.
  • The Illustrious and Renown'd History of the Seven Famous Champions of Christendom . T. Norris / A. Bettesworth, London 1719.
  • Jan Dirk Müller (Ed.): Novels of the 15th and 16th centuries . Volume 1. Frankfurt a. M. 1990.

Modern editions

  • Karl Joseph Simrock : Collection of German Folk Books . 13 volumes. Frankfurt 1845-1867.
  • German folk books in three volumes . Berlin / Weimar 1982.
  • Jan Dirk Müller (Ed.): Novels of the 15th and 16th centuries . Volume 1. Frankfurt a. M. 1990.
  • German folk books , I, retold and ed. by Gertrud Bradatsch and Joachim Schmidt (with 37 woodcuts based on contemporary prints). Leipzig 1986
  • Richard [Edmund] Benz (Ed.): Three German People's Books. ( The seven wise masters , Fortunatus and Till Eulenspiegel with the woodcuts from the early prints). Heidelberg 1956, reprint Cologne / Olten 1969 (= The books of the nineteen , 177)

Research literature

  • Joseph Görres : The German people books. Closer appreciation of the beautiful little history, weather and medicine books, which have received partly internal value, partly coincidence, through centuries up to our time . Mohr and Zimmer, Heidelberg 1807
  • Anneliese Schmitt: The German People's Books. A contribution to the history of the concept and its tradition in the period from the invention of printing to 1550 . [Diss.] Humboldt-Univ., Berlin 1973.
  • Hans Joachim Kreutzer : The myth of the people's book: studies on the history of the impact of the early German novel since the romantic . Metzler, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-476-00338-8
  • Margaret Spufford : Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in seventeenth Century England . Athens GA 1982, ISBN 0-8203-0595-2
  • Elfriede Moser-Rath: "Funny Society" Swank and joke of the 17th and 18th centuries in a cultural and socio-historical context . Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-476-00553-4
  • Anneliese Schmitt: literary and publishing book successes in the first century after the invention of the art of printing . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1988.
  • Jan Dirk Müller: Epilogue to novels of the 15th and 16th centuries . Volume 1. Frankfurt a. M. 1990, ISBN 3-618-66310-2
  • Albrecht Classen: The German Volksbuch. A critical history of a late-medieval genre [= Studies in German language and literature , 15]. Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston NY 1995, ISBN 0-7734-9134-1
  • Olaf Simons: Marteau's Europe or The Novel Before It Became Literature . Rodopi, Amsterdam / Atlanta 2001, ISBN 90-420-1226-9 , pp. 495-512
  • Urs Büttner: Genres as imaginary contexts. Four functional histories of the 'People's Books'. In: International Archive for the Social History of German Literature , 41,1, 2016, pp. 21–40.

Web links

Wiktionary: Volksbuch  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g h i j Gustav Schwab : The German people books . Tosa-Verlag Vienna, (without year)
  2. ^ Lit .: Tales of the Fairies (1716), Bl. A
  3. Lit .: Don Bellianis (Dublin: L. Dillon, 1720), p 2
  4. Lit .: Champions of Christendom (1719), pp. 164–168
  5. Lit .: Battalus [1691] (1714), pp. 125–28.
  6. Lit .: Huet, Romances [1670] (1715), pp. 136-138.
  7. ^ Lit .: Jan Dirk Müller (1990), pp. 989-999
  8. new, complete Berlin: Trafo-Verl., 2003