"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.