Random Saturday - I don't recognize you ...

... but I recognize your bag! You were here the other day!"
That happened to me in a store some years ago. I'm practically an invisible ninja if you didn't know that yet, but my shopper keeps giving me away.

There are usually two reactions.

1. "Do you have cats?" or "You have cats, don't you?"
If you think of the variety of purses and shoppers and totes around, it's rather amazing how many people react to a bag. I've heard it in shops, at the train station, on trains and even when I was just sitting on a park bench, and I never felt as if people were making fun of me.
Well, except for that one time on the bench at a train station when someone asked me where I got the bag while their pal stole my cell phone (not a smartphone) from it within seconds which was pretty crafty. I bet they both laughed their thieving little butts off afterwards. I only noticed on the train.
Of course, I was really mad, but it could have been worse, though, it could have been my wallet with all my cards or my keys.

2. "Mom, look! The woman has kittens on her bag!"
This one comes either very loud or whispered with a shy look in my direction. Little kids always loved my kittens.

Indeed, I have kittens on my shopper.
This post was inspired by the post "What's in my bag?" on "Within a world of my own". Thanks, Sally!

My last substitute shopper

Let me tell you something about my shopper.
I have had it for more than 35 years - the design, that is, not the shopper itself.
I got the first one as a gift from my ex-mother in law. It was a set of shopper and an umbrella I still own. Not that I have used it often, I don't like holding umbrellas and also tend to forget them on trains or elsewhere. I lost my first umbrella at five years old, it was red and had ruching all around, and the loss was devastating because it had been a birthday gift (and because I could be a drama queen even as a child).

When I opened the umbrella to take a picture, the color completely surprised me. I have no idea if it changed over the years or if it has always been like this and never really matched the shopper.
The shopper hanging from the door handle is the one currently in use, by the way.

Wait, I have one in use and one substitute?
That's right. It's what I meant by saying I've had the design (and the umbrella) for more than 35 years.
When my very first shopper gave up after a few years - my shoppers have to work hard and it's usually the handles and bottom corners going first -, I happened to see the exact same one in a shop and that's how it started.
I hardly go anywhere without it, full or not, it has become my signature piece. I usually say that if something doesn't fit in there, I don't need it. It carries heavy books, groceries, meds, gifts, and more. I can still see my ex at fleamarkets slipping finds into my bag with a wink, so I got a surprise when I opened it, especially if it was something for me.
He found stuff, I had to carry it because he never had a bag with him. Sometimes I had extra bags in the shopper.

One time, I couldn't find a substitute right away, so when I found it, I bought two and after that always got a new one when I retired one, so I would always have a substitute.
I should be on the fifth, maybe the sixth one now plus the extra.
Nowadays I would probably try to repair the old one first, sew up the straps and corners, or I would try to think of something to do with the fabric.
Actually that might be my only option eventually because von Lilienfeld - that's the brand - has not only retired the kitten design, they have also changed the design of their shoppers (you can get anything from famous paintings to penguins or merkats, also cats, but not my kittens), they are smaller. I'm not amused.
I have already looked around if I can find one elsewhere, used maybe, but only found two in the USA, one of them a knock-off, both of them no option.

I also have a small version of the shopper, by the way, which I obviously haven't used since 2007 as it still has the Maientag badge from that year (see here to learn about the local Maientag badges)! The badges are usually available around the beginning of May and as soon as I have mine - I always pick yellow and red with rare exceptions - I put the yellow on my shopper and I used to put the red on my small handbag. Oops. Guess I haven't been "out" in that long.

You may want to ask if these are really the only bags I own and the answer is no.
I have several more hand/book/tote bags in different sizes with cats on them. Most of them were gifts, well meant, some of them are really extra cute, but none of them has been used more than a few times.
I use small totes (with cats on them, surprise!) as extras sometimes if I think I'm going to need them, but mostly these bags hang around the place and look cute.
I'm just an extreme creature of habit sometimes and in this case I have embraced it full-heartedly. Without my trusted shopper, I feel lost.

Maybe I'll gather all the other cat bags for a group session sometime and introduce them to you in another random Saturday post.

Happy Gotcha Day, Gundel!

It's hard to believe that it has been eight years since a beautiful little panther barged into my life.
Oh dear, you should see her face. Actually Gundel did nothing of the sort. She harmlessly walked into my sister's yard and got a friendly welcome from her later catnapper even she didn't know it then.
I don't think I ever told Gundel's story here before, so it's about time.

As I said, one day Gundel just walked into the yard. She was so terribly thin, her fur looked really dull and overall she just looked sick.
After my sister had given her something to eat which she wolfed down, she left again.
I had seen her from my other sister's window, and as I do love me a black cat, I yelled down that I would take her.
Gundel had disappeared, though, which made us feel bad because she really seemed to need help. Luckily she turned up again a few days later and my sister scooped her right up - no resistance at all -and took her to her flat.
It was probably the first time in a while that she could just lie down and relax, but of course she didn't know that it was off to the vet's the next day.
She didn't have a chip, she weighed only 2.9 kg (not even 6 1/2 lb.), she had one cloudy eye from herpes, and the things she did in the litter box could have wiped out a small country (not the first cat to try that in my house).
I tried to find out if she belonged to someone while she was staying in quarantine - we had to wait for her blood results and have the litter box issues cleared up before letting her get together with Greebo and Ponder - in the library.

The first day she stayed on the window sill, looked, slept, and ate. I can't imagine what her life in the streets had been like because she just looked utterly exhausted and happy not having to move. She didn't even seem to have the strength to show that strange human if she still had some fighting spirit in her.

If she had run away, got lost or if someone had thrown her out, I never found out, but I knew I wanted to help her forget about her experiences in the street.
I don't know if I succeeded in that because until today she sometimes wakes up yelling and looks around confused and scared - at least that what it looks like to me - and then goes back to sleep when I pet and cuddle and whisper to her. It's heart breaking to watch, but luckily it doesn't happen often.

When we got green light rom the vet, I opened the door to her prison (with two very comfy armchairs with nice blankets which was really all she had wanted at the point apart from food) and hoped for the best with the boys.
Greebo was not very interested in her. He was more like "Yeah, new kid, not the first one, it's fine with me, do you think she'll still want to eat that?". He was such a sweet baby.
Ponder, on the other hand, was interested. He wasn't sure what this small thing was and he was confused that the small thing wasn't interested in him.
The lady went straight to the bedroom and hid underneath the bed for about two days, only a little paw or the tip of her tail peeked out. She came out for food, though, which she still needed so badly that she ate half of a huge antibiotics pill I had put down next to her while wondering how to make her take it.

Then she spent a few days on the bed.
Can you tell how different her fur already looks here? She was still very skinny, though, more than you can see here.

Eventually, she started exploring the place and she didn't take any nonsense from the boys.
Greebo didn't mind her at all and Ponder was happy to play with her. They liked slapping the other's butt and then the offender ran until he or she was caught and slapped back. It was so fun to watch. They never slept next to one another, though. There always had to be a little gap which makes it even more amazing how close der Dekan is sometimes allowed to sleep near Gundel now.

This is one of my favorite pictures. I remember showing it and some other angles on Facebook and asking jokingly how on Earth I was supposed to tell them apart!
Believe it or not, a few people informed me - not as joke - that Gundel was smaller than Ponder. Seriously now? I'm so glad they pointed it out to me!
Not that she was a kitten. My vet guessed her age at about 3 or 4 which means she'd be 11 or 12 now. I think she must still be still 3 or 4. 6 tops. (Remember I said I'm not good at math?)
And Ponder was just a really big boy. Not fat - he really wasn't - but big and wonderful.

Ever since Gundel has been the Lady of the House. Meffi was my Queen and Esme was my Princess, and Gundel doesn't look like a Duchess or a Marchioness, so Lady it will have to stay.

She's named after Gundel Gaukeley, by the way, which is the German name for Disney's Magica de Spell. The initial plan had been to make her a Nanny Ogg (Discworld), but her sleek black look and the way Gundel sounds to German ears - at least mine - made that a way better name.

My little witch lady was quite the fighter in the early days. Understandably, she was not sure how far she could trust me, and often when I petted her, she snapped at me, never seriously, but very quickly and it made me jump every time. That quickly got less and less, though, and she hardly ever does it now unless I'm terribly annoying (meaning I pet her three seconds too long, so that's fair).
Only if I try to pill her directly, she turns into a clawed octopus, a deadly one. Luckily, I can crush the pills she's getting (allergies) and liquid snacks - I call them squishies - are too tempting for her to refuse. I wish I could put eye drops in her food, too! She's fine with me cleaning her eye, but not putting something in it. Yeah well, I don't like that myself, either.

Lately, she has developed a few bad, but not tragically bad habits, influenced by the brat, no doubt. One of them is the ripping out of the kitchen baseboard/s under the cabinets (she definitely learned them from him).
I put her on a Wanted poster for vandalizing and she bitterly complained about that on Ponder's blog which she has taken over.
You know how cat people often are, though. We are secretly proud of what brats our feline overlords can be, and after Gundel had been down for months after problems with both knees, it was good to see her up to shenanigans again.

Gundel, my sweet, here's to eight more years (at least)!

Silent movies - Suspense

Comedy, science fiction, horror, romance, crime, adventure, fairy tale, slapstick, animation, is there something that is still missing in my silent movie journey? There is indeed - documentary.

An obvious choice would have been the first film to be called a documentary (which is debatable as a lot of it was staged due to the realities of film making in 1922 and also represented the Inuit life as it had been, not as it was at the time of filming) - "Nanook of the North" - but I'll be honest, I wasn't ready to deal with hunt scenes and the life of polar dogs at the time.
Instead I called up a list of silent documentaries and picked "The Epic of Everest" without knowing what exactly it was about although it was not difficult to guess that it would involve mountaineering, a topic I'm not really interested in.
Of course I'm fascinated by the majesty of the Himalaya and Mount Everest - known as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Qomolangma in Tibet - how could you not be, but why someone would want to climb it, is beyond me and my strictly non-adventurous mind.
I had of course forgotten about donkeys and yaks carrying heavily loads, and a half hour into the film they had lost me when they showed a baby donkey born on the trail and said how many miles this poor baby allegedly had to walk. It hadn't signed up for this!

What to do now?
I went back to the list, but nothing sounded as if I was up for watching it.
Understandably, that was still the time of the great explorers and exploring something always involved animals, livestock or wild ones and therefore inevitably scenes I didn't want to see. Even those filmmakers who wanted to point out what humans did to wildlife used that same wildlife to stage situations for their documentaries - for example Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack of "King Kong" fame.
I know those were different times and therefore those films are interesting in more than one regard, not just for their content, but also why or how that content was collected, but my skin is not thick enough for it these days.

I will keep searching and have one movie on my list, but for this post I needed something short and quick now.
What I found was "Suspense" by Lois Weber from 1913 which is in the public domain and which you can watch here.

As this is a silent short film of 10 minutes, the plot is told rather quickly (spoilers as usual!).
At a remote house, a maid quits letting her employer, a mother with a small baby, only know by note. She leaves the key under the mat. When the mother finds the note, she locks doors and windows.
A tramp has seen the maid leaving, goes to check out the house and finds the key. When the woman notices him, she calls her husband who has to work late, but the tramp cuts the line.

The husband hurries to help her by taking the first car parked in the street and racing off followed by the owner and police.

While the woman has locked herself in the bedroom with her baby and put a dresser in front of the door, the tramp looks around the house, and the man gets held up when he hits a man standing in the middle of the road and helps him up again.
The tramp hears sounds from above, and armed with a knife, he breaks into the bedroom. Just then the cars arrive at the house. Shots aimed at the husband panic the tramp, he runs downstairs where he gets overpowered by the husband and police.
The man runs upstairs to find his wife and baby unharmed. He explains everything and is of course forgiven.

I have to admit that I had never heard of Lois Weber before, another example of not just an early maker of silent films, but a woman whose achievements had been forgotten.

Public domain

Actually, Weber was a pioneer in early film, the "first American woman to direct a feature film" and the "leading female director-screenwriter in early Hollywood", not to mention that she also acted, for example as the mother in "Suspense". Eventually, she even had her own studio.

This isn't supposed to be a post about Lois Weber (and her husband Phillips Smalley with whom she mostly worked until their divorce), though, especially as I haven't seen any of her other movies yet that have survived. She had a large output, but a lot is lost like so many silent films.
There are four links at the bottom if you would like to know more about her, and who knows, maybe she'll be turning up in another post of mine eventually.

To the movie now.
The title doesn't promise too much.
Like other films, "Suspense" was likely inspired by a French Grand Guignol play from 1902 - "Au Téléphone" by André de Lorde and Charles Foley - which didn't have a happy ending, though. The husband has to listen to his family getting murdered without being able to help.

Weber used different techniques to build up suspense, for example the split screen showing the three narratives - the husband at the office, the wife and baby at home, and the tramp breaking in.
In the car chase, there is the mirrored image of the pursuers coming closer.
You have interesting angles like when the wife looks out of the window and sees the tramp outside.

There is a lot more to say about the technical side of the film of course, but I leave that to the experts. Instead I want to tell you what I thought when I watched it a second time as there is rather a lot to see for a short of 10 minutes and you know me and my weird brain. I always have questions.

- The maid who contemplates announcing her leaving, but decides against it. Does she think she can't pull it through when she's looking the mother in the eye?
Without seeing her, the tramp might not even have got the idea to take a look at the house, and she unknowingly made it easier for him by putting the key under the mat. What did she do that for, anyway? Why didn't she just leave it on the table with the note?
And why does the mother not go and get the key from under the mat when she locks all the doors?

- The tramp eating the sandwiches, rummaging around a bit, not very convincingly, and then going for the woman. I've heard of people eating or drinking at crime scenes, but usually after the deed is done.
Why the sudden urge for making a "simple" break-in even worse?

- The husband hitting the man in the road. I find it rather nice that he doesn't just drive off, but gets out, pats him down, asks him if he's okay, but then he stops to look out for his pursuers twice (!) before getting back in the car and driving on. Oh, my wife is in danger, la-di-da ....

Does that make it sound as if I didn't like the movie? Not at all. Those are just things I started thinking about after watching it a second time.
Of course all of those things had to be just like this to increase the feeling of suspense which worked just perfectly.

From what I read, Weber's other movies often revolved around social issues, so "Suspense" seems to be an exception, and of course a lot of her work is lost, but I'm definitely putting her on my watch list for more.


Sources:

About "Suspense"
1. Fritzi Kramer: Suspense (1913) A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, April 24, 2016
2. Short of the Month: Suspense (dir. Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley, 1913). On: Nitrateglow, February 11, 2022
3. "At the telephone" - English translation of "Au téléphone" by André de Lorde. In: "One-act plays for stage and study, second series, 1925, edited by Walter Prichard Eaton"

About Lois Weber:
1. Angelica Aboulhosn: Lois Weber: An Early Hollywood Filmmaker with Her Own Studio. In: Humanities, vol. 44(2023), issue 4
2. Shelley Stamp: Lois Weber. On: Women Film Pioneers Project. October 15, 2019
3. Lea Stans: "The Muse Of The Reel" - The Pioneering Work of Director Lois Weber. On: Silent-ology, January 25, 2018
4. Travis Lee Ratcliff: A History of Silence: The Cinema of Lois Weber. On his YouTube channel

Nostalgia - Princess / Prinzess Victoria needles

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

Actually, I already started talking about today's small collection a few years ago as part of a homage to needles, I just didn't know then this would turn into a collection of its own.
I have used and broken quite a few needles since I started beading. Bead embroidery, especially on the beaded sneakers (no idea why Blogger insisted to have extra space between the lines in that post) and the HeatherCat sneakers (this is the last post of four which has all the links if you are interested), was extra hard for them (well, and my hands).

In the homage post, I talked about how I discovered vintage paper needle packs while looking for beading needles and how I fell in love with some of the labels.
Most intriguing to me were the Princess Victoria needles because there were variations, and I thought they deserved a post of their own by now because there will probably be one or the other addition to them.
That means I will then update this post instead of the other one which might get a bit too long otherwise.
In fact, this one is also quite long already.

It's nice that the packs don't take up much space, though, and of course I can always use the needles if I need them as most packs are full, this isn't just decoration (or so I tell myself). The packs are scattered throughout my Steiff collection, rather fitting I think as most of it are sewn animals.

So what are Princess Victoria needles? I honestly wish I knew how they got that name.
When I got the first tiny pack - not even an inch - of size 12 sharps, I started searching, but without any success.
What I do know is that there are all sizes, that the packs can have a red or a golden edge and "banner" around Victoria, and that there are different pictures of Victoria. Some have a more vintage look, some look quite modern, some have a blurry or messy print, some a very clear modern looking one.

Some labels are all English, some are all German (saying Prinzess instead of Princess and using the German terms for the needles, such as Frauennadeln), some are a mix of English and German using the word "Prinzess" and "feinste", but the term "sharps", for example.
I even found a picture on eBay UK with an Italian label (and now wish I had bought that pack)!

There are those without a country of origin, but also some that specify it, "Germany", "Made in Germany", "M.i W. Germany, Imp. Allemagne OCC" (between 1949 and 1989), but also "Made in Czechoslovakia" (which means between 1918 and 1992) or "Made in the Czech Republic" (after 1992).
Last but not least, most of them that I have seen don't have a company name printed on, but there are exceptions. So far I have seen "Prym", "Rhein Nadel", and a name I'm not sure about, "St. Witte", "Stowitte"? What's up with that?
Did the needle production go from one company to the next?

And who is this Princess Victoria, anyway?
Does the name refer to an actual Princess Victoria, such as Queen Victoria's daughter (who eventually became the German Empress) or the daughter of Edward VII.? Or does it refer to the Queen herself? I think that's possible because there are also Queen Victoria needles with a similar Victoria on a slightly different background (I don't have any of those). Doesn't it make sense for it to be the same one?
As you will see further down, the needles have been around for a long time, but after all Victoria was crowned in 1838, so could it have been that long?
I doubt she was really important enough for someone to think the name would appeal to buyers before she was a Queen.

At some point, someone must have said "let's call them that forever and ever", but why? Because, you know, you can actually still get a mix of sizes from Prym, but in a plastic tube and not with silver-plated or gold-plated eyes anymore to "protect the environment".
Possibly the manufacturer(s?) intended them mainly for the British market and therefore used the name to appeal to buyers there? Why would they bother to make a difference between the "Princess" and the "Queen" needles at all then?

Then I found this older blog post by Papergreat again that I had already commented on in 2022 and then forgotten right away.
Chris had found the following in The Economist of November 18, 1899, page 1629 - 1630 from the correspondent in France:
"A deputation of cravat manufacturers was received this week by the Minister of Commerce to make representations on the use of false trade-marks on importations of the articles they sell from Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Italy. These goods, the deputation declared, are marked with the words "Made in London," or other words implying that they are of English origin, which appears to be a recommendation with buyers, and the Minister was consequently asked to put in operation Article 2 of the Madrid Convention, under which they may be seized. ... The prices at which these goods are sold are probably lower than those at which they can be imported from England, and French makers are sufficiently protected against imports from England by the higher cost and the heavy duty. It is, however, a common practice to import German goods marked as English, and recently the attention of the British Chamber of Commerce was called to the sale, in France, of packets of needles bearing a portrait of the Queen, with the words, "Prinzess Victoria Needles" and the name of a fictitious manufacturer at Redditch (Note: makes me wonder if it said Redditch on the packs). The spelling of the word princess betrayed the origin of the article, but would escape the attention of the buyer."

So does that mean that a bunch of German companies used that name for the needles trying to disguise where they came from - but why the mix of languages and why the different Victorias? Might they be able to tell me something about the age of the needles, like different Steiff buttons indicate the time period an animal was made?
This is only getting more intriguing. I'm afraid I'm not done with this rabbit hole yet. I'm a librarian and determined which means I'll probably be having a look at some of our databases to see where I can get with those.
Ok, so I'm probably not just determined, but obsessed with these now.

Click on the photos for more detail.

This was the one that started it all. Such a tiny pack, only about 1 inch!

Update Victoria needles April 2025:
I got some more packs. One pack is as tiny as the one above. This time we actually have a name, but I'm not sure what it is.
Googling, I can find one result for "St. Witte & Co." which doesn't help in any way, but there is something between the T and the W. Could that be a badly printed O (I found the name Stowitte, but again without any more info) or is it a kind of abbreviation?
The only other name I found was "Schmidt, Witte & Co.", a shipping company, that didn't help much, either. Or could this be a fictitious company?
Anyhow, this time we have German words for these size 10 sharps and even the Prinzess is written with a z as it would be done in German.

I got these three packs for a great price. All of them are unused and full of big, fat size 2 needles. As you can tell, we are back to English words, too.

To show you the size difference, I took a picture of all of my new acquisitions together.

Then I got these - some sharps and some "betweens", two of them with a German print and one by "Rhein Nadel", another former needle producer in Aachen (which changed their field from needles to automation eventually, so this pack must be from before 2003).

How funny that the one "Made in Germany" has the English print, but still the Prinzess with a z. Even funnier is that the print is very clear and looks more modern, but the "Prinzess Victoria" got mirror-inverted!
This pack looks identical to one I have seen marked with Prym. Did a company make these and then marked them for different companies or did Prym just take over from Rhein Nadel?
Is this a plot to drive me crazy? 😂

Then I went on a bit of shopping spree, but that's going to be it for a while, I swear!
If I get something new, it will have to be some kind of variation (uh-oh, I may have ... in May ...).
This is one result of the shopping spree. It's old new stock from a seller who gets her items from warehouses.
Now I have all the sizes for sharps and finally some packs with the red "banner" instead of the golden one. The edges are golden on all of them - except one which is yellow!

I think the one marked "gold ey'd" should be the oldest, it's also the only one with the "Princess" print and without a country of origin.
All the others are marked "Prinzess" and "Made in Czechoslovakia" except for one that says "Made in Czech Republic", but I don't think they all have the same age as there are different fonts. My guess is that the ones with the red banners are younger, also because one of them is from the Czech Republic which we know must have been after 1992.

Here's a comparison between the two packs of size 0 sharps.
The print is so much more beautiful and elaborate on the old pack, the crowns are completely different, Victoria has a lot more details down to the pendant she's wearing! Even the flowers are more beautiful.

By the way, this is what "gold ey'd" (later gold eyed) looks like. Some of the needles are corroded, but I bet they are around 100 years old if not older, so that's to be expected.

Update May 2025.

This little cutie is also one of the tiny ones.
It's the first one I have with both the German and the English description of "Frauen Nadeln" and "Sharps" and once again Victoria looks different.
The color print is quite messy, though.

This one is my favorite so far. My guess is that it was a sample card, maybe used for representation in haberdashery shops.
It has the sizes 1 to 10 safely tucked into cord loops and an extra needle pack marked 1/9 with the /9 added in handwriting, but actually there are 12 different needles in it.
The numbers under the sample needles with the article number 126 and "Et. 925" (no idea (yet) what that could mean) are also by hand, very carefully done.
The pack is marked "Gold Ey'd Sharps" and "Made in Germany".
Also - yet another "Prinzess Victoria"!

This is a bit of a different needle book that my last acquisition is glued to. I found several examples of this early 20th century needle book in past auctions and one of them showed the exact same needle pack, but in different condition, so I know it wasn't mine.

Victoria looks the same as in the sample card, but this time we got "elliptic gold eyed sharps" in the sizes 3 to 9.

Does someone need a needle? I happen to have one or two ...

Here's the Princess/Prinzess gallery of different faces so far.

"Engelhörnchen"

"I collect "Engelhörnchen"", my colleague said. My empty stare probably told her that I had no idea what she was talking about.
"We have some here in the library, you know. Engelhorn's allgemeine Roman-Bibliothek." Engelhorn's General Library of Novels? I got curious and looked it up in our catalog.
Engelhorn was a publishing house in Stuttgart, our state capital and the city where I work.
"A selection of the best modern novels of all peoples" - that sounded interesting, especially because there were a few hundred volumes from 1884 to 1902 in our stacks and the titles sounded intriguing.

In fact, the "Engelhörnchen" series - I guess that was my colleague's personal nickname for them as I couldn't find it anywhere online - has over 1000 volumes! That doesn't mean over 1000 novels, though, as many of them were published in two parts.
Starting 1884, there was one (or half of one) novel every other week, after 1924 fewer until the series was cancelled with 1930 being the last year of publication.

Special about it was not only the price of 50 Pfennig for the softcovers and 75 Pfennig for the linen bound books, but also that there weren't just German authors available, but "all peoples" meaning authors from England, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Poland, the USA (and possibly more, I didn't go through the whole list), translated into German.

Commercial (public domain
via Wikimedia Commons)

The series became the Engelhorn publishing house's biggest success and was so popular that more than 2 million copies were sold.
When the first volume was published, "Die Gartenlaube", an "illustrated family paper" of the time, praised Engelhorn for offering the German people the opportunity to get more acquainted with foreign literature as "the knowledge of other peoples' literature is far less widespread in Germany than is generally assumed" (not without expressing their hope that Engelhorn will "exclude the dirty and poisonous excesses of foreign fiction", however, taking a special stab at Émile Zola for being "grossly realistic").

This wasn't the only source approving of the "Roman-Bibliothek" over the years.
There were also series by other publishers, but not in the same quality for such a good price.

Engelhorn even printed one of the reviews in their books. Enjoy the language.

"This is a venture that deserves to be supported in every way! When the first red volumes were published more than 24 years ago, the short-sighted and narrow-minded may have shaken their heads at the great daring of giving away really good and valuable intellectual fare at such cheap prices. If you look back over the long period of years, how much has not already been achieved! Almost no house, no family where the solid volumes have not found their way into; almost no private library, however small, would want to do without the red friends in their midst presenting themselves so friendly. And yet, there is still a lot to do! There are still houses in which the rotten and decayed backstairs novels are preferred to be read. Here it would be the duty of everyone close to displace the poisonous seed and put in its place the healthy and always good fare of the "Engelhornschen Allgemeinen Romanbibliothek". The happily healed will, when seeing clearly for the first time, certainly pay thanks to the friendly helper."

Wow. If this didn't stop people from secretly reading "Hintertreppenromane", I don't know what could!
That's especially funny because one of the few novels I couldn't resist at fleamarkets because they were almost as cheap as at original price was by an American author who didn't get too good reviews for some of his books.

When we entered the series in our library system, I picked out one or the other volume to read it if the title caught my eye, like "Liebe und Gymnastik" = "Love and gymnastics" which sounded really funny to me, but whose original title was "Fra scuola e casa" which simply means "Between school and home". I seem to remember it was about a gymnastics teacher and that things were complicated, but after all those years I'm not sure anymore if she actually found love.

I know it sounds as if I want to make fun of the series, but I that's not my intention at all. I just don't think it's even possible for such a series to offer consistenly "good fare", and for us today it could even be more difficult to enjoy the style of those days.
I did read the books that I have, by the way, but don't remember a word of them. Maybe I should try one again. How about the scary stories by Dick-May (the pseudonym of French author Rosalie Jeanne Weill, by the way)?

Aren't the books really pretty, though? It's a pity having them stand on a shelf so you can only see the spine.
Having so few volumes myself, with two of them newly bound in brown and marbled paper, I can't say if there were more versions of the covers.
Here are closeups of the two different logos of the angel blowing the horn. I like the more elaborate angel, but also the roses of the other cover.

Something I also like about old books are bookplates.
The first one shows a man drinking from a fountain with a head on a stone - Walter Kopfstein, the last name translates to head stone.

And a very different heraldic style here.

My colleague has long since retired, I wonder how far she got with her collection.
I'm going to hold back myself. As interesting as I find this project and the fact that the series ran successfully for so long, I don't have the space for 1000 volumes I won't be able to read. Maybe I'll get weak if a cheap copy is throwing itself in my way, but I won't go searching for it actively.
If I want to read one, I could always go online, many libraries have digitized these volumes by now. It won't be the same of course - you know I love printed copies -, but if I feel the need for an old adventure novel for example, I'll know where to look.


Sources (in German):
1. Engelhorns allgemeine Romanbibliothek. On Wikisource
2. Die Gartenlaube 1884, Heft 36. On Wikisource
3. Carl Engelhorn. On: Engelhorn Family Web Site. Citation from the thesis of Sabine Schust: Carl Engelhorn und die Volksbibliothek Stuttgart, page 9 ff.

Random Saturday - Isabel's diary

Funny, I was so sure I had written about Isabel's diary before. I can almost see the post before my inner eye. Maybe I always wanted to write about it and then forgot which is strange as Isabel's diary is always standing there out in the open and I always look at it when I walk by.
I was reminded of it again because of Lisa's comment about the photo album on my rose post.

Who is Isabel, you'd like to know? And why I have her diary, me nosy person, me? Well, I'd like to know, too. Who she was, I mean.
Isabel is one of those mysteries I have been slightly obsessed with, on and off.
I came upon her diary at a fantastic fleamarket in Marin County many, many years ago (the one where I also got my beloved bowler). It's amazing how clear the memory of the stand is still in my mind. I wasn't even sure if I should have made this a nostalgia instead of a random Saturday post.

I got lured in by that beautiful leather cover and gilt edging without having taken more than a little peek at what I thought was just a calendar.
Only after I had bought it - I seem to remember I didn't pay very much - I took a closer look while walking down the path and found it was actually a diary although I think it really was meant to be used as a calendar.
(And look, printed in Germany and it returned there after 66 years!)

This is what it looks like inside.
The book is sorted by days and each one of them has five segments, one for each year, not exactly big ones for a diary, but for appointments and short notes.
Isabel did her best to squeeze in what was important to her, but as it happens with diaries sometimes, she left a lot of the pages completely blank.
She started Christmas 1932, stopped April 20, 1933 (the last few days already only had "Dear Diary" written in), and ended with four entries in September and two more on November 5 and 6. Those last ones were really interesting. You'll see.

During Covid restrictions, others started baking, feeding their sourdough starters, cooking, crafting, getting themselves pets.
I spent some of my time with copying all of Isabel's entries into a text file - with all abbreviations, typos, and confusing words or names - and added information where I could find some. I even badgered a San Francisco reference librarian hoping to find out more in one case (alas, no help offered which was a little disappointing, he hinted at sources I had already listed myself, but couldn't access). I don't have an Ancestry or a Newspapers.com subscription for example, so I had to stick to what was easily available, but I still found out one or the other thing.

This is the inscription on the front page.
"Dear Diary: -

I received you from Miss Esther W****** (she wrote the full name of course), 125 Chestnut Ave., Naz. Pa. Your the first one in my life, with Esthers Love I shall conceal with you my daily happenings.

Yours truly,

Isabel"

The first entry from Christmas Day 1932 tells us that she's writing with the pen she got from Ernest for Christmas, and that they (it doesn't say "we", but I'm quite sure) had a lovely Xmas Eve going to "Baltaberin". That was actually a club in San Francisco called "Bal Tabarin" (after a Paris night club) which still operates today, just under a different name after it was sold in 1951.

On New Year's Eve we learn that Isabel is working for a couple in Palo Alto City who were in their 60s at the time (I found them listed in the 1940 census). From what she says, my guess is she was the housemaid, she also mentions a cook and a chauffeur. Often she writes how tired she is and has to go to bed early.
The house they lived at was built in 1931 and has an estimate of about $10 to 11 million at the moment. What a bargain.

A randomly chosen page

In the next few months covered, Isabel tells about Ernie visiting often and going out with her in Palo Alto, sometimes they also drive to "Frisco", though. She mentions a few shows, movies, and books, but also that she and Ernie do jig-saw puzzles at home together. Actually, Ernie's name turns up quite a lot.
On March 7, 1933 Isabel turns 24 "hoping the next twenty-four years will be better than the past, still single". I hope the permanent wave her sister (Marie? She usually calls her Sis) treated her to cheered her up a little and also the "big bouquet of Roses, carnations, + Freezias from - Ernie". The next day she writes she had a lovely birthday "considering the hard times".

I'm not going to write out the whole diary for you now although there are some interesting entries. (What did Louis need the $100 for he wanted to borrow? And was Louis her brother? I'm digressing, sorry.) There are 16 pages after all (including my notes).
Maybe you are as curious as I was, though. Did Isabel get her happy ending?
Yes, my lovelies, she did.
On September 2, 1933 Sis and Mell, her husband, drove them to Reno. "They're sure great sports. What a beautiful sunrise when we woke up in each other's arms in the back seat." Aww.
The next day they got married there at 10:30 a.m. with Sis and Mell as their witnesses, and Sis gave them a wedding breakfast at the Riverside Hotel. The building still exists, but is not a hotel and casino anymore now.
On the 10th, Sis and Mell gave them a wedding shower (glad he stepped up after all since he seemed to have left the breakfast to his wife 😋).
That was worth waiting from April to September without any news, don't you think? Still, how much courting have we missed there (which was probably for the best)?

The two last entries see them set up house in San Francisco. I found the address in an old phone book, but no matching first names that would satisfy my endless curiosity about their last name. I'm not giving up on the Reno wedding yet, though. It has been three years since I last did some research and I think I'm going to do another run sometime.
Sis and Mell were the first guests in their new apartment (and celebrated their wedding anniversary the next day).

You may wonder why I would even be that interested in Isabel.
It's as with Ida in the rose post. I have a story in my head now and a much more detailed one thanks to these few months Isabel shared with me, albeit involuntarily.
I wish I were a writer and could do something with that story, but even as a child I "wrote" stories only in my head for my own pleasure (very few exceptions), so maybe that's how it has to be.

I see the pen Ernie gave Isabel, the bouquet. I know from a real estate post what the house looks like that she worked at (although I'm sure it didn't look exactly the same as now 😉). I see those two lovers over a jigsaw puzzle. I imagine what Isabel's room at work looked like. I even see Florence and Joe, the cook and chauffeur, and have a vague idea of their employers without any reason. Shame on me, I probably put them all in drawers.
And now I wonder if they had children and grandchildren. Did Ernie have to go to war? Was life hard? Did they both work? What did Ernie do for a living, anyway? Were they happy together? They had only known each other for a year and got married after being engaged for one month.
I really hope life was good to them. In my head, they get a fulfilled life and happiness. Hopelessly romantic.

Well, and one last question of course - how did Isabel's diary end up on a fleamarket? Is anyone still out there who knew her? Okay, those were two last questions.
Of course I felt like a snoop or still do, but on the other hand there were no really intimate things in the diary, I can assure you, and I was glad about that because it probably would have made me feel very guilty to read that. I still would have done it, but not shared it so publicly.
Isabel, if you are looking down on me or whatever, I hope you forgive me for prying into your "daily happenings" you meant to "conceal".

I know it looks very symbolic that the diary is open
- oh, and by the way, the key is still in there in a tiny envelope -
but that it is mere coincidence.

Silent movies - The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Is it possible that I haven't watched any silent animation films yet? Old ones, I mean, because of course even today many animation films are silent.
Film historians consider "Fantasmagorie" by Émile Cohl to be "the first traditional animation on standard film", by the way. It is from 1908!

Let's go to the first animated feature-length film, though. Disney's "Snow White", you think? No, sorry. That wouldn't fit my silent movie category very well, right?
It's "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" from 1926, written and directed by Lotte Reiniger, and yes, this is actually the earliest surviving feature-length animated film (the two earlier ones by Quirino Cristiani are believed to be lost) which was made in a silhouette animation technique invented by Reiniger using cardboard cutouts and thin sheets of lead. It reminds of shadow puppetry, for example Indonesian Wayang, but laying the silhouettes flat allows for more movement.

The plot (spoilers ahead!) told in five acts is a free adaptation of motifs from One Thousand and One Nights, the central theme being the love story of Prince Achmed and Pari Banu (called Peri Banu elsewhere).

Act 1.
The African sorcerer creates a flying horse. He presents it on the occasion of the Caliph's birthday, but refuses to sell it for money. The Caliph offers him free choice from his treasures and the sorcerer chooses his daughter Dinarsade. When Dinarsade's brother Achmed tries to prevent that, the sorcerer convinces him to try out the flying horse, but he doesn't tell him how to bring it down again.
So the Caliph's men capture the sorcerer and throw him into the dungeon.

Act 2.
Achmed finds the lever by accident and lands on the magical island of Wak-Wak ruled by the beautiful Pari Banu.
She and her maidens, dressed in flying feather costumes, arrive at a lake to bathe and are watched by Achmed who then takes her costume away and kidnaps her. The flying horse takes them to China.
There he tells her he wants to marry her, but then gives her back her costume, so she can decide if she wants to leave. She chooses to follow him.
By now, the sorcerer has escaped the Caliph's dungeon turned into a bat after he detects where his horse is. He steals the costume. When pursuing him, Achmed falls into a deep hole.
The sorcerer goes back to Pari Banu pretending Achmed has sent him and takes her away on the flying horse.

Act 3.
The sorcerer sells Pari Banu to the Emperor of China. When she rejects him, he gives her to his favorite to kill her or take her for his wife.
The sorcerer has returned to Achmed to take him to a mountain where he traps him under a boulder, so he can go back to take Dinarsade. In the flaming mountain lives a witch, however, the sorcerer's enemy who gives Achmed weapons and an armor, so he can resuce Pari Banu and defeat the demons of Wak-Wak. He manages to rescue Pari Banu, but the demons seize their ruler feeling betrayed by her.
Achmed forces the last demon fly him to Wak-Wak, but he can only open the door there if he has Aladin's lamp (yes, in German we write him with just one d).

Act 4.
Achmed saves Aladin from a monster, but is distraught to hear that the lamp is gone.
Aladin tells him the story of how a strange man promised him Dinarsade for a wife if he fetched the lamp for him from a cave. Aladin ends up prisoner in the cave, but finally discovers the magic of the lamp which brings him home and lets him build a palace overnight. The Caliph gives him Dinarsade for a wife, but one day she, the palace, and the lamp are gone, taken by the sorcerer, and Aladin is to be executed. He escapes and ends up in Wak-Wak where Achmed has found him.
The witch arrives and by request of Achmed and Aladin summons the sorcererto fight him. They change from one animal shape to the next until the witch defeats and kills the enemy.

Act 5.
The demons want to make Pari Banu jump off a cliff. Aladin tries to release the spirits of the lamp, but the demons take it from him. The witch takes the lamp back and releases the good spirits to fight the demons.
A multi-headed demon grabs Pari Banu and Achmed attacks it chopping off his heads which grow back as two for one. The witch uses the lamp to prevent that.
After the victory over the demons, Aladin's palace comes floating through the air. As promised, the witch keeps the lamp and bids them goodbye for their travel back to the "Land of the Mortals".
Aladin finds Dinarsade in the palace which takes them home where the Caliph welcomes the happy couples.

It seems some people found this plot very confusing, especially if they weren't able to understand the intertitles. There is a version with English intertitles on DVD and BluRay and there is a version with English subtitles on YouTube, but it's not only stretched, it's also missing the beautiful original score by Wolfgang Zeller.
I watched the movie here on YouTube.

As you can imagine - after all we are in the 20s - there are Orientalist tropes. It makes me wonder how someone would avoid that best today without just abandoning such a project completely. Serious question. What do you think?

They might research the topic for a more appropriate portrayal of cultures - for example it has been pointed out that Pari Banu's outfit in China reminded more of India - and they might avoid obvious stereotypes and exaggerated portrayal of people's looks and behavior - something Reiniger actually acknowledged in later work.
Would it make sense, though, for something so clearly based on One Thousand and One Nights, to leave out nationalities completely? Or just some of them? Turn the story into something completely new with just elements from the stories that inspired it?

There is more to the film than meets the eye, however.
A bit about Lotte Reiniger first. She was only 23 when she started making the movie. She had been cutting silhouettes - "Scherenschnitte" as we call them in German - since she was a child and it must have been amazing for her to have this project financed. She was also a lover of fairy tale stories and in her work you can find many more of them, also European ones.
Her views were socialist although she didn't utter them as openly as for example her husband Carl Koch with whom she worked on most of her projects.
I read two long articles about "The Adventures of Prince Achmed", one in English by an assistant professor of literary science, one in German by a former professor of art history, both of them noting how Reiniger tried to encourage diversity within a dreamy fairy tale setting even if it unfortunately relied on orientalistic stereotypes and caricatures. The keywords are eroticism, homoeroticism, and female empowerment.

To be honest, the men in the film are not very likeable.
When the sorcerer wants to take Dinarsade for the flying horse, not her father steps in, but Achmed who then promptly gets distracted by the flying horse himself. That's why the sorcerer gets captured, not because of Dinarsade.
The Caliph stays quite inactive.
Achmed is a voyeur and kidnapper.
Aladin gets Dinarsade because of the magic palace.
Let's not even talk about the Chinese Emperor and his favorite.

After Achmed gives back her feather costume, Pari Banu decides on her own free will to follow him (it would have cut the film quite short if she had kicked him and flew off instead). She rejects and fights the Chinese Emperor.
Most powerful, however, is of course the witch. They would all have been pretty lost without her.
Poor Dinarsade doesn't get any chance to shine.

Regarding the homoeroticism, Reiniger knew a lot of homosexual men and women from film and theater in Berlin and she actively aimed to portray homosexuality differently from how it was done in Germany at the time, as something casual and natural.
I didn't have any expectations when I watched the film and have to admit that I was surprised at first at the sensuality and desire shown throughout the movie although some of it was within an orientalist stereotype.

The movie was like getting just a glimpse from outside into a fairy tale world which of course had a lot to do with the way the characters move.
Even though I had watched a video of Reiniger showing the process first, I didn't see actual cardboard cutouts in the film thanks to that flowing movement, but characters, only in a more artistic, dreamy way than if there had been real humans.
Of course the effects helped a lot, too. Light effects, water, fire - it was really interesting to hear Reiniger talk about how they created some of those effects.

It's definitely a film worth watching, not just because of the impact it had although it's of course amazing to know that such a young woman was one of the pioneers of animation.


Sources:
1. Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (in German). On the Lotte Reiniger website
2. The Art of Lotte Reiniger, 1970 | From the Vaults. On: Youtube - Channel "The Met"
3. Im Gespräch mit Lotte Reiniger (in German). Ausschnitte aus "Die Frau hinter den Schatten: Lotte Reiniger" von Brigitta Ashoff. 1980. On: YouTube - Channel "V.S.-Produktion"
4. Lilith Acadia: 'Lover of Shadows': Lotte Reiniger's Innovation, Orientalism, and Progressivism. In: Oxford German Studies 50(2), 150 - 168 (only available via licensed access)
5. Barbara Lange: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926). Ein cineastisches Experiment (in German). In: Animationen: Lotte Reiniger im Kontext der Mediengeschichte. Tübingen 2012 (reflex: Tübinger Kunstgeschichte zum Bildwissen, Bd. 5)
6. Scott Nye: Scott Reviews Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed. On: CriterionCast, September 27, 2013
7. Fritzi Kramer: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) - A silent film review. On: Movies Silently, October 13, 2013