Barbie's Wardrobe - Midnight Blue

I'm not a fashionista. I'm ... you could say... a wearer of clothing. I like my clothes to be comfortable and the right size and possibly not to have holes or spots (that part is not always easy if you have cats).
There are features I love, like pockets in dresses or 3/4 sleeves, but beyond that, I'm fairly undemanding and not adventurous.
That doesn't mean I don't like to look at clothes at all, especially those that I would never be able to wear myself, due to money, my size, lack of occasion, etc. There are still ways to bring Haute Couture into my life, though. I mean Barbie and her friends.
I have always been fascinated by miniatures and Barbie's vintage outfits with their tiny zippers and buttons and buckles and accessories are incredible. This is my "fashion life", either through my own small collection or pictures.
(And yes, I do know Barbie's body isn't natural, I knew it as a child and I never strived to look like her ... if I had, something would have gone wrong).
Let me give you a glimpse in Barbie's wardrobe every, now and then.

1965 was an excellent year. I should know because I was born in 1965, a definite sign of quality.

1965 was also the year the first American Girl Barbie turned up, our model today is from 1966, however. I seriously wish I would have aged as well as she has.

Today she's presenting an ensemble called "Midnight Blue".

The elegant gown has a strapless silver lamé bodice and full midnight blue satin skirt.
It is worn under a wide satin cape of the same color, lined in white satin like the large fake white fur collar.

The ensemble is usually completed with long white gloves, blue open toe mules with heels, a silver dimple purse, and a white graduated pearl necklace.
Unfortunately, this presentation was so spontaneous that we couldn't find the purse and necklace. Okay, you got me. I only have the golden purse and that wouldn't have worked. I'm quite sure that I have the necklace, but another doll is wearing it.
And while I'm in confessing mode, one of the gloves is a substitution (which is too big which I only just noticed again, I really need to get her a proper one), and there's a bit of water damage to the satin in the back.
Fact is that "Midnight Blue" is a hard to find outfit and prices are accordingly high. I was lucky to find this one and it displays beautifully, don't you think? For full disclosure, I edited the doll stand out of the picture, but didn't change anything about the outfit.

 
"Midnight Blue" is one of the elusive 1600s fashions and was only manufactured in 1965 (what did I say?) as #1617.
It was not unusual to have color variations in other countries, such as Japan or Europe, but that doesn't mean those are easier to find. In this case, there's a different blue (some people say that color comes from fading in sunlight, others say it's a variation), but also a "Midnight Pink" and "Midnight Red" (as called by collectors not because the name makes sense, but identifies the design easily).
I would love to have both, but the red even more than the pink.

I always thought this would be the perfect outfit to wear for the opera - maybe "The Magic Flute", after all she looks like a "Queen of the Night" herself!

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel in any way.


Sources:

1. Sibyl DeWein and Joan Ashabraner: The Collector's Encyclopedia of Barbie Dolls and Collectibles. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
2. Sarah Sink Eames: Barbie Doll Fashion, Vol. I, 1959 - 1967. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
3. Vintage Barbie Midnight Blue. On: Fashion Doll Guide
4. Vintage American Girl Barbie Dolls 1965 - 1966. On: Fashion Doll Guide

From my children's book cabinet - Mr. Mysterious & Company

I don't know if it was the same in your family, but some books seemed to be around forever.
The book I want to talk about today was one of those which was a surprise for me when I pulled out my copy because it's definitely not the family copy, and not just because there's a sticker with a stranger's name in it. I seem to remember that ours looked much more battered, probably no surprise in a big family.

It's Sid Fleischman's first children's book, "Mr. Mysterious & Company", about a travelling magician and his family, and only as a grown-up when I found one of his other books, I became aware how much more he had written, not just children's books, but also screenplays, novels for adults such as detective or adventure stories, and books about magic.

I know I loved this book as a child, but I haven't read it forever, so who knows if the magic is still there (pun intended!). Let's find out together.

Mr. Mysterious & Company - that is the Hackett family with father Andrew Perkins Hackett, Mama, uhm, whose name is never mentioned, and the children Jane, Paul, and Anne.
With them are Hocus and Pocus, the horses pulling their wagon, and Madam Sweetpea, the cow who determines their travelling speed, and some rabbits.
Set in 1884, the book tells the story of the Hacketts travelling through the country with the destination of San Diego where they finally want to settle down.

On their travels from city to city, they entertain people with their magic show in which each of them has their own role, the father as Mr. Mysterious who makes a chicken give milk, pulls rabbits out of hats and shows slides with the magic lantern, Mama on the piano, Jane as the Sleeping Princess floating in the air, Paul as the all knowing Great Sphinx, and Anne is the living doll in the enchanted dollhouse.

There's more to their life, though. Mama, who used to be a teacher, gives them school lessons, but they also have adventures.
They have an encounter with grumpy Jeb Grimes whose dog they have found for whom Pa gives up his golden watch. He's so smart they re-name him "Professor" and he even gets his own part in the show because he loves rope jumping.
They help a sheriff catch the thief called the Badlands Kid who stole Grimes's gold.
They get to ride a high-wheel bicycle when they meet a wandering newspaperman and his family who are on their way to found a new town.
They use the magic lantern to chase off horse thieves (more on that later).
Pa tricks some farmhands who have locked up a judge who has sentenced one of their friends to jail for stealing cattle.

And then there is of course Abracadabra Day.
It's the family's secret holiday. As the children don't have much chance to misbehave, they each get one day they are allowed to be bad or pull pranks without being punished for it, but you can't announce it beforehand.
Paul uses his feet to untie the knot of the rope holding Madam Sweetpea to the wagon.
Jane pins up her hair during one of the shows although Mama says she's too young for that.
Anne catches ten frogs she lets loose during a show.

In the end, they make it to California. The thought of never putting on a magic show again makes them all sad, but on the other hand they are also happy to settle down. Jane will be able to have friends for longer than a day, Paul will help Pa on the farm, and Anne might be able to take the ballet lessons she has been dreaming of.
Then they meet Big Jim Norton. He plans to open a theater and asks them to put up a show once a month and Pa says yes.
"By gosh and by golly ... It's a bargain. Why, we could declare it a kind of Abracadabra Day. Once a month - magic for everyone."

This book is from 1962 and of course it feels aged in parts.
There is a "cigar store Indian" in one town which unfortunately hasn't been unusual for much longer than that, and the horse thieves mentioned above are Native Americans.
One Goodreads review, for example, said there are other books that don't "perpetuate and normalize racism". To be honest, I think that's taking it too far. It is said that Mama has met good and bad Indians, there are no derogatory names ("Indians" was still used at the time), and they are not the only ones who pose a threat in this story.
What I personally disliked most about this part of the chapter was the illustration going with it.
I think if you read the book to a child, you could either skip that part or use it for a little history lesson.

It probably really depends on the child, though, if this is a fun story telling it a bit about the olden days - like the newspaperman explaining how you can make a city by setting up a newspaper first and attracting people that way - or if it thinks it's a boring story.
I think it's still a bit of fun.

Los Angeles Times,
CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Fleischman wrote the book for his own children Jane, Paul (who also became a writer), and Anne, by the way, and dedicated it to them.
In fifth grade, he decided to become a magician. After the war he finished college and first worked as a reporter, then went into writing fiction which led to him becoming a Hollywood screenwriter.
Writing "Mr. Mysterious & Company" for his children made him get into children's books, but he also never gave up magic completely.
"They didn't understand what I did for a living. Other fathers left home in the morning and returned at the end of the day. I was always around the house. I decided to clear up the mystery and wrote a book just for them."

Fleischman liked to incorporate history, folklore, and of course magic in his books but also humor.
The Sid Fleischman Humor Award, whose first recipient he was (among many other awards including the Newbery Medal), is given each year in his honor by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.


Sources:

1. Sid Fleischman website
2. Mr. Mysterious & Company on Goodreads

Nostalgia - My Stacey

It's not the first time I have told part of this story which began on Christmas, but within another post and with a terrible picture.
This story led to my collection many years later, so I think it's worth telling it right.

Christmas Eve 1970 - you know we give gifts on the 24th here - an excited little girl waiting for the living room door to open.
A brand new doll's pram awaited me and hand sewn clothes for my chubby doll.

Little Cat was an ingrate, though, I'm afraid to say. Her older sisters got Mattel dolls, and since little Cat has always been a sucker for miniatures (which hasn't changed to this day), she was fascinated. The small shoes, the tiny buttons and zippers ... Cat started nagging like only a five year old can. She annoyed her sisters wanting to look at their dolls.
And when she had nagged long enough and had probably driven everyone nuts, she was finally promised that she would get her own Mattel doll as soon as the stores were open again - on the 27th.
That can't have been fun for my family. I can't really remember, but I'm sure all I could think of was when it would be the 27th at last, and I probably wanted to go first thing in the morning.

When I was able to really reflect this years later, I felt kind of bad about it.
Yes, only kind of because I'm still really happy I got my doll, but 1. we didn't exactly swim in money and 2. my mother must have been so very disappointed at my reaction after sewing those doll clothes herself. How could she not have thought what a rotten little brat I was? I would have in her place.

Nevertheless, she took me to the store on the 27th and I got my first Mattel doll.
I have a very vague recollection of the floor of the toy store we went to - the "Fässler" - (name changed after my sister's memories 😉), but I wouldn't be able to tell you if I picked the doll and the two outfits myself or if my mother did. I couldn't even say if my sisters were with us and gave their expert advice on the matter (there will be another post eventually on how to become an expert at the time).
Anyhow, my doll was - I should say is because she's still part of my collection of course - a Stacey with platinum blond hair.
My sister also had a Stacey, but with red hair, and I hope she'll forgive me for telling you that she poked me by saying that my Stacey was old because she had grey hair. Siblings, huh?
I loved my Stacey and I played with her. This poor girl had to go through a lot. A five year old doesn't have the dexterity to dress and undress her fashion doll without irreversible damage. I guess that's why I had got a pram.

Stacey's head turned yellow over the years and she has a sweaty face. That's not my fault, it's something that happened to a lot of vinyl dolls from that time. I could try to have her restored (or try it myself), for example with new skin paint, but I figure that she just aged together with me.
She was the first one in my collection - which I didn't know I would have -, she was bought as a toy, not a collector's item, and amazingly, she survived. It feels wrong to think about changing her, almost as if I had plastic surgery (and I don't "paint" my skin, either).

Oh the stories this poor little lady could tell ...

Her sickly face color is not her only problem. Even washed her hair has never been like new again.
As someone *whistling innocently* made her walk to the library (which I had set up in an armchair, completely with handmade call number tags) a lot by banging her feet on the ground a little too hard, she eventually lost half a foot.
Many years ago, my sister (the other one who got an (ash blond) Summer Sand TNT Barbie that Christmas) sewed an evening dress for her, but she can't wear heels with that because of her foot. Instead she's wearing a pair of vintage white lace-up boots.
 
She's also missing a finger, it broke off from putting bracelets on her wrist too often.
Do you remember that the two parts on ballpoint pens didn't necessarily screw together directly in the olden days? Often there was a little metal ring in between, in silver or gold. There were really thin ones and the wider ones. The thin ones were easy to put over her hand because you could bend them easily and then you would just bend them back on her wrist.
It was not that easy with the wider ones and bending Stacey's pinky often enough led to it breaking off eventually.

Another very typical problem for dolls that were played with are neck splits. Imagine a little girl constantly ripping the head off to put clothes or handmade necklaces on her doll (now I know how to make small necklaces with hooks) and pushing it back on the neck, it's a miracle the splits aren't worse. You can glue those neck splits, but you know my fragile relationship with glue.

Stacey was a so-called TNT doll - Twist'n'Turn - meaning she could not only turn her head from sideways, but also her waist. She also had bendable legs.
Stacey was introduced in 1968 as Barbie's British friend,  part of the "British Invasion". She brought the spirit of Mary Quant and London's Carnaby Street with her - a true "mod" doll.
She came in two versions, both manufactured only until 1971 which is a real pity.
There was the Talking Stacey who spoke in a British accent and came with a side ponytail and bangs in platinum blond and red (also called "Copper Penny").
The TNT dolls also had blond or red hair. The 1968 TNT had a side part and little curls at the forehead and sides, her ponytail was in the back.

A beautiful 1968 platinum TNT Stacey - no yellow face! - with open hair wearing
the "Suburban Shopper" dress (#969, 1959 - 1964) without accessories 
and with blue closed toe heels instead of white open toe heels.

The 1969 to 1971 TNT had short hair with a side part and flipped up ends, but if they are played with and have been combed, and depending on the amount of hair (which wasn't always the same), that could turn into quite the hairstyle.

"Copper penny" Stacey - also with a yellow, but not a sweaty face - wearing
"Sleeping Pretty" (#1636, 1965) without the accessories, one open toe heel is
missing its pompom which is not unusual, but a pity.

All of them smile showing their teeth, they have rooted eyelashes and blush on their cheeks.
They are popular with collectors not only for their beauty, but also because they weren't on the market very long.

There were two Sears Exclusive gift sets for Stacey, "Stripes Are Happening" (#1545, 1968) and "Stacey Nite Lightning (#1591, 1969). These are the only outfits with a "Stacey" tag inside. Sears Exclusives are beautiful, but were unfortunately not on option for little German girls.
Stacey also appeared on several cases, either alone or together with Barbie, and once with Barbie and Francie.


Sources:

1. Sibyl DeWein and Joan Ashabraner: The Collector's Encyclopedia of Barbie Dolls and Collectibles. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
2. Sarah Sink Eames: Barbie Doll Fashion, Vol. I, 1959 - 1967. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
3. Vintage Stacey Dolls 1968 - 1971. On: Fashion Doll Guide


Stacey/Barbie/Francie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel in any way.

P.S. If you worry about my baby doll, there's no need to. She was taken for walks outside in her new pram and she wore her new clothes, too. When she finally broke (she kept losing her limbs because the plastic wore out), my teddy bear, who has about the same size, inherited her more unisex kind of clothing.
Ok, so that's no reason for behaving like a spoilt brat, but I apologized for it often enough over the years 😂

Random Saturday - Piggy banks, part 2

Last week, I posted about the history of the piggy bank and said I would write a second post including some memories of mine, so here I am.

The first money box that I can remember was made from wood. I got it from the bank on World Savings Day.
The World Savings Day or World Thrift Day was established during the 1st International Savings Bank Congress in Milan, a day promoting the idea of saving all over the world.
In some countries it has disappeared completely by now, but in others it is still a tradition on October 31st or, like in Germany, on the last workday before because the 31st is a holiday in some regions. Some banks even have a World Savings Week. Nowadays, the focus of the organizers is on developing countries.
It's not a surprise that Germany still has it, after all we always prided ourselves on being the world champions of saving.
I loved the little gifts we got and even today my tape is still in an (ugly) brown tape holder from that time! Back then, the only option for our little money to go was the savings book. My so-called "youth savings books" in the 70s and early 80s had the appropriate colors and hippie flowers. I wouldn't surprise if I still had them around in a pile of old letters or papers, should I happen to find them, I'll add a picture here.

My money box got broken soon, so I can't show it to you, but I found that exact kind on eBay, in different shapes and with different images, mostly from fairy tales.
While the shape I had is there, the image is not, I'm pretty sure I had Snow White. Who knows, though, maybe it will turn up eventually?
In the bottom it had a metal disk with a keyhole unlike other piggy banks which had - as mentioned in my first post - to be actually broken to get to the money.
Another possibility was having a box which could only be opened at the bank, in the early days bank staff even went to the costumers to open the boxes there.

I still remember that we had a savings cabinet in elementary school. It was smaller than this one in a German pub and stood in a corner of our classroom, probably on a table.

Public domain, picture by Willy Horsch
(via Wikimedia Commons)

I don't remember if bank staff came to the school to open the cabinets, count the money from the little inserts behind the individual slots and add the amount to the "school savings book", but I guess that's how it must have been. If you look at my own book, though, it doesn't seem to have happened very regularly.
I wasn't very good at saving, only once - shortly after my birthday - I had a veritable fortune on my book which I withdrew quickly.
Excuse the look, it's over 50 years old. Also I noticed again that not only my name, but also my address at the time had been filled in incorrectly.

By the way, "Sparefroh", the little guy with a coin for his torso, was an advertising figure which was invented in Stuttgart in 1955 and was obviously still around in the 70s although I can't remember it from anywhere else but my savings book.
He got much more popular in Austria where he is still used today in modernized form.

For those who want to collect money boxes possibilities are endless and it is recommended to restrict yourself to a certain look or material unless your space and financial resources are also endless.
There are the simple piggy banks you have to break - unless you are professionally trained like me at putting a knife through the slot and carefully guiding the coins out -, or those with a key that you or the bank has.
My small size Drumbos (which I wrote about some years ago) would have to be used with a knife.

Collectors also distinguish between "still banks" without mechanics or "mechanical banks" which do something if a coin is thrown in and which are especially sought after in the USA. The first ones were for example made from tin, in the USA also from cast iron.
Hundreds of variations were produced, with music, with counting mechanisms, or with movement.
There are also the vending machines like my Stollwerck "Victoria" (which I wrote about here) which "sold" you chocolate or candy.

My own favorite piggy bank was my safe, though. No idea where it went to, but it probably didn't survive my greedy children's hands trying to get to the Pfennige inside.
As I didn't own any kind of piggy bank at the moment, I treated myself to one for my birthday (yeah, I make the weirdest birthday gifts). The safe from my childhood was grey, but I think I can live with a little color change.
I'm sure my money will be totally safe from burglars now 😉

Sources:

1. World Savings Day and the Piggy Bank. History and curiosity. On: UniCredit website, October 31, 2023
2. Spardosen. Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, Spardosen aller Zeiten. On: Kreissparkasse Köln - Geldgeschichte (in German) - also follow the different links at the bottom for more detailed articles and pictures of different kinds of money boxes
3. Jörg Bohn: Spardosen. On: Wirtschaftswundermuseum (in German)

Random Saturday - Piggy banks, part 1

This post was inspired by another daily thread in my jewelry forum. "Did you have a piggy bank? What did it look like?"
Now doesn't that sound like another great rabbit hole? Because, you know ... I actually had more than one over the years myself. You probably did, too?

Where do piggy banks even come from, though, and why are they called that? After all, not all of them actually look like pigs.

Let's have a look at the history of the savings box, money box, whatever you want to call it.
Would you have thought that they have been around since ancient times?
I found two different informations for the oldest known money box in the world. The first one is on one called a "Thesauros" (or "Naiskoi" according to one source) which is in the shape of a temple and was found in Priene, an ancient Greek town (today on Turkish land), dated to the 2nd century BC.

Money box held at the
Antikensammlung Berlin,
picture taken by Marcus Cyron,
CC BY-SA 3.0
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Another source, however, says that the Iraq Museum in Baghdad had an even older one in their exhibition in 1990 although it's not clear if it still exists now.
It was found in a private residence in Babylon and was dated to the end of the 4th or beginning of the 3rd century BC. It was thrown on a potter's wheel and looked like an amphora with a slit cut in at the side.
Those easy to make money boxes, which were popular around the world and are still made, had to be broken to get to the money ("break the bank"). You can find a picture of it here.

Earthen pots used in Nepal,
picture by Krish Dulal, CC BY-SA 3.0 
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Over time, money boxes have come in all kinds of shapes and materials, but where does the pig come in?
The oldest piggy bank in Germany is from the 13th century (again there are different opinions about it, in this case about it actually being a piggy bank or just a pig sculpture). 
Then there's the information about one from 1576, but it rather looks as if that story had a satirical background and was then passed on as truth.
Pigs have been a symbol for luck and wealth since ancient times. There are different theories about the reasons. In German, we still say someone "hat Schwein" for unexpected luck, literally "has pig". So it makes sense that a pig would be used for amassing that wealth by saving.

Verified piggy banks from the 12th century were found on the island of Java although these are really wild boars.
I wonder if this one from the 14th/15th century broke from age or if it was broken to get the money out ...

Majapahit terracotta piggy bank,
Trowulan, East Java,
picture by Gunkarta, CC BY-SA 3.0
(via Wikimedia Commons)

In Stuttgart, there's a Pig Museum with over 50,000 items which is an interesting mix of history, art, and kitsch.
Yes, I've been there myself before and was very glad they also had a vegetarian option in the restaurant there.
Of course they also have a few piggy banks behind glass.

Where does the term "piggy bank" come from, though? It's often used for savings in general or for money boxes that don't even have the pig shape.
I wish I could tell you, but again there are different theories. Was there really a clay called "pygg" used to make dishes and pots in which Western Europeans collected their money, so eventually potters started to make "pig banks"? 
Was the word "pig" used for earthenware in general?
So how did the pig get to Germany, for example, where the word is "Schwein"? Did the Germans just translate it? What about the alleged first one from the 13th century then? Which was there first, the "Sparschwein" or the "piggy bank"? 
Is it true that German immigrants helped to make the pig shape popular in the US?
Merriam-Webster tells us the word "piggy bank" was first used in 1917, the Oxford English Dictionary gives us 1913.
Will we ever know? Is it even important?

There is so much more to the history of piggy banks that I decided to stop here and write a second post about this in which I will also be sharing some of my own memories which got triggered thanks to this post.
The post can be found here once it's live.


Selected sources:

1. Spardosen. Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, Spardosen aller Zeiten. On: Kreissparkasse Köln - Geldgeschichte (in German)
2. Twisted tail: The great piggy bank mystery. On: BBC. StoryWorks
3. David M. Robinson: Some Roman Terra-Cotta Savings-Banks. In: American Journal of Archaeology, 28(1924),3, pp. 239 - 250 (open access)
4. Hans Graeven: Die thönerne Sparbüchse im Altertum. In: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, 16(1901), pp. 160 - 189 (in German)

Nostalgia - "Glanzbilder"

Last Saturday I wrote about the tradition of the "Poesiealbum". I mentioned "Glanzbilder" (literally "glossy pictures", in English they are called "scraps" or "die cuts") and that we had used some in a gift for a retiring colleague.
What I hadn't mentioned was that I might have bought just a little bit more than we needed, mostly because we wanted some variety and all went overboard, overcome with memories.
Let's talk about "Glanzbilder".

The history of scraps began in the 19th century. At first, they were black and white and had to be cut out by hand.
The invention of color printing in the form of chromolithography in 1837 allowed printing ephemera in high numbers, in good quality and at low cost. Among those ephemera were series of collectible pictures which came with different products for advertisement, could be collected in special albums and were also traded (which is of course still popular today although the pictures changed from being just advertisement articles to stand-alone products over time).

Around 1860, the German company Hagelberg started to print, emboss and die cut sheets with several pictures connected by small strips of paper.
In English, they are called scrap reliefs.
Until 1900, Berlin was the heartland of the scrap production, but there were also many manufacturers in other countries although they often didn't make scraps exclusively.
Scraps were used in scrapbooking, I have to admit I never knew where the name came from because it's not something I have ever done myself. In Germany, but also in other German or Dutch speaking countries, they were also used for "Poesiealben".

Subjects were often sentimental and romantic, angels, kittens, puppies, birds, flowers, butterflies, holiday themes, children, and much more.
They were colorful, embossed for more depth, and of course there were those with glitter which we loved best, but which were also more expensive.

Scraps are not self-adhesive like stickers, by the way. They had to be glued into an album.
There was also a different way, though, as I found out thanks to a post by a Swedish blogger. She shared scrap albums with sticky leaves you could put your scraps on and then protect with a plastic cover (there's a video showing that).
Scraps are still popular today, thanks to a wave of nostalgia, even if it's a bit kitschy. There are only two big companies left, one in Germany which actually only started in 1948 and markets them worldwide, one in England which also makes paper masks and vintage-inspired cards.
They may not turn up in the old-fashioned poetry album anymore, but they are still collected and used in crafts such as scrapbooking, collages, decoupage or card-making.

Interesting is also that the co-owner of the German company has gone (still goes?) to rest homes to set up small exhibitions and talk about scraps.
The stories and the visual impact are supposed to awaken memories in people and make them think about positive experiences in their lives.

I gave some of my pictures away which will probably find their way into friendship books, the successors of the poetry album, but I also kept some although I have no idea yet what I'm going to do with them.
Actually I thought about starting another poetry album, but that would mean having to send the album around as most of my friends don't live in my town and for me that sounds like too much of a hassle for them.
So I guess I'm just going to look at them every, now and then ... and remind myself that I still haven't found my Poesiealbum"! 😆

Sources (Englisch and German):

1. Die Geschichte der Glanzbilder-Produktion. On: Ernst Freihoff - Glanzbilder - Reliefs / Glanzbilder Historie (in German)
2. Scrap Reliefs Collection. On: Mamelok Papercraft3. Peter Kolakowski: Glanzbilder. On: DW (Deutsche Welle), November 19, 2009 (in German)
4. Glanzbilder - heile Welt auf Papier gebannt. In: Mindener Tageblatt, December 22, 2012 (via Wayback Machine, in German)
5. Hanna Andersson: Collectible vintage Scrap die-cuts | Glanzbilder or Bokmärken. On: Studio iHanna, July 27, 2020 (with a video)
6. Scrapbooking and the origin of scrap relief. On: Fantastik, January 11, 2024

Random Saturday - "Poesiealbum"

The other day I rummaged through my book cabinets. Where was it? I was so sure it had always been right there. Which cabinet or drawer or "safe spot" had I absent-mindedly chosen this time?
I'm talking about my "Poesiealbum", literally "poetry album".
I don't know if you have ever heard of this tradition which has been around for centuries, mostly in German and Dutch speaking regions of Europe.
Thank you to my friend (one of my sisters couldn't find her album, either, and my friend saved the other one having to look for hers) who was so kind to send me pictures of her album to illustrate this post. Of course I edited out the names and location.

The tradition started with the "Stammbuch" or "Album Amicorum" in the early 16th century in the circle of the Wittenberg reformers. Followers of Luther and his associates asked them for handwritten notes to remember their connection.

"Stammbücher" could be books, often theological ones, with added empty pages, but also loose leaves which could then be bound into a Bible.

In the beginning, this tradition was not restricted to academic circles, but to Protestant ones. When it was mainly taken over by the academic community with students collecting notes by fellow students, but also professors, it spread to other countries and also among Catholics.
For some time, it was also adopted by nobility where guest books had already been a custom.

Usually, those albums were used during times of study or travel and ended with the start of a profession. They were kept not only for sentimental reasons to remember friends from that period, but also for references that could be helpful.

While the tradition had mostly vanished in academic circles in the early 19th century, the middle class, which had started taking it over in the late 18th century, kept it alive. Now also women and children collected inscriptions by family and friends and the "Stammbuch" became the "Poesiealbum" which also meant the type of inscriptions changed and were frowned upon by "opinion leaders in matter of artistic taste" who found them too trivial.

They changed even more, however, especially after the "Poesiealbum" mostly became a thing in elementary schools.
The inscriptions could be anything from single poetry verses, quotes, advice, adminitions, religious or secular, but in my time many of the little poems - some of which turned up regularly with some classmates using the same one for everyone's album - were confirmations of everlasting friendship or they were humorous, sometimes both.

Here's an example for the first one :
I sincerely hope that you will not forget me so quickly, and I wish you something special, stay just the way you are!

I can't remember the first ones I wrote, but I got bored of the usual quotes or proverbs after a while, so instead I took poems by a German humorist, for example the one about why the lemons turned sour. From what I read, that's not something many children did.

You usually wrote on the right page and the left page got some kind of picture.
Very popular were "Glanzbilder", literally "glossy pictures" (in English "die cuts" or "scraps"), of kittens, puppies, birds, flower bouquets (sometimes in baskets), angels, even better (and more expensive) if they had glitter. You can still get these today, by the way. When we did a kind of "Poesiealbum" for a retiring colleague, I got some for the nostalgic feeling.

My godmother put a pressed flower in my album, safely covered with adhesive foil.
There were also a lot of drawings, though. Or a mix of glossy and hand drawn pictures. I used to do bad illustrations myself to go with the poems chosen by me, for example lemons with stick legs.

When I look at album pages others share, they all look so familiar to me.
We still had lessons for "Schönschrift" = "beautiful writing" in our early school years - I never got a 1, which was our best mark, no matter how hard I tried - and of course that was expected from us to apply in the albums as well.
Therefore, a lot of those pages could be right out of my own album, down to the embellishments, the dog-ears hiding "secret" little messages, the pencil lines to make sure all lines were straight (sometimes erased afterwards, sometimes not, sometimes badly) - and the typos!
Of course we wrote with fountain pens back then and every, now and then see letters erased with what was called "ink killer" for example (and which came back again after a certain time) or are crossed out.
If you had a "Poesiealbum", you had to live with all of that because you had absolutely no influence on what the others wrote, how beautifully they wrote or not or how messy it got.

I had almost forgotten about this kind of pencil "rubbings"!

My album is quite messy which isn't entirely the others' fault.
I had reserved a spot for my mother and one of the coveted glossy pictures. A classmate thought it was meant for use and glued it in. I ripped it back out which of course looked ugly, so I glued the pages together.

Those who have been following me for a while know about my difficult relationship with glue ... yes, it looked terrible and also I felt really guilty for hiding my classmate's inscription that way. Brigitte, I'm so sorry, I was only 6 and overcome by emotion when I did that.
By the way ... my mother never got around to actually write into my album although I had found a note with a draft once (I knew she didn't want to because she didn't like her own handwriting), so all of that had been for nothing.

I'm always amazed how beautiful and clean older albums look, stunning handwriting, sometimes with drawings, really pretty.

Picture via pxhere

Interesting is also that there are actually books like that in 19th century US America, probably introduced by German or Dutch immigrants.
They didn't catch on, though, and were replaced by the more popular yearbooks.

The "Poesiealbum" finally got a successor, the so-called "Freundschaftsbuch" or "Freundebuch" = "friendship book" or "friend book" which is funny because that's what the old Latin name means.
It doesn't take us back to those old times, though.
The "Freundschaftsbuch" looks like a lot like a collection of questionnaires with pre-printed categories - name, hobbies, likes and dislikes, and so on. I'm not a fan, so I'm not even going to say more about it.

Of course I still haven't given up hope that I'll find my album soon, then I will share some of it (not the glued pages!) in an extra post. As we like to say, "the houses loses nothing", it must be here somewhere!


Sources:

1. Werner Wilhelm Schnabel: Das Album Amicorum. In: Album : Organisationsform narrativer Kohärenz, ed. by Anke Kramer and Annegret Pelz. Göttingen : Wallstein Verlag, 2013, pages 213 - 285 (in German)
2. Antje Petty: "Dies schrieb Dir zur Erinnerung ..." From Album Amicorum to Autograph Book. On: Max-Kade-Institute for German-American Studies. University of Wisconsin-Madison
3. Stefanie Bock: Das Poesiealbum: Eine evangelische Erfindung. On: indeon, August 16, 2022 (in German)
4. Peg Frizzell: My Cherished Poesie Album. On: FanningSparks

Enid Blyton and the "non-Blytons"

Have you ever read Enid Blyton?
Blyton was an English writer of children's books which have been wildly popular since the 30s and sold millions of copies worldwide.
A lot of German kids were fans of one or another of her series or maybe still are as grownups.
A while ago, I got a video recommendation on YouTube called "These Enid Blyton novels don't exist - but Germans are obsessed with them anyway" on the channel "Spinster's Library" (I think the title has a touch of click bait, but the video was interesting).

The comment section on that video absolutely blew up with comments by a lot of German women, but also men, about their own experiences with "Hanni und Nanni", "Die fünf Freunde", "Dolly", maybe known to you as "St Clare's", "The Famous Five", and "Malory Towers" if you ever read Blyton, but also with other series of hers and even other authors.
Then there were those who read the original series and were surprised to hear that ... I'm getting ahead of myself. The whole thing is quite confusing.

All three series mentioned can teach us a little about continuation books and also domestication and foreignization.
I had thought about writing a post just about domestication and foreignization, also because it would go quite well with my post about dubbing from a few days ago, after all translations are also a part of dubbing. There are different theories and opinions about these, though, and I don't even know if I would always choose the same one myself depending on what kind of literature it is.
So I'll make this very short, and if you are interested in more, there are some sources at the end of the post.

Domestication = translate a text in a way to make it understandable for the target audience by adapting it to their culture which can/will lead to information loss compared to the original
Foreignization = translate the text in a way that stays true to the original and the culture it comes from even if it may be difficult for the target audience to understand without further research

The books I'm going to talk about come under the header "domestication" which really isn't that surprising for the time (Blyton wrote these mostly in the 40s and 50s, in Germany they were published in the 50s and 60s).
Just as with dubbing, the question is how far can you go with a translation. How far do you want to go? And of course the eternal question - what will probably make more money ... which usually also defines who makes those decisions. Translators in the comment section of the video shared that often they don't decide about changes, but the editors/publishers do.
Of course it's always controversial, especially if the target audience are children. How much can and do you expect from young readers?

I read "Hanni und Nanni" at my friend's house and had only one of the books myself. I was somewhere between 7 and 10 years old when I read them, and I got to volume 15. Then I bought the collection 1 to 19 years later for sentimental reasons which was when I found out that Enid Blyton had actually just written six volumes of the "St Clare's" books.

Illustration for "Hanni und Nanni"
by Nikolaus Moras who illustrated other Blyton books and other
series for the German publisher Schneider-Verlag.
As you can tell, the illustrations have also been adapted to the
time of publication, not just the text!
I liked the shoes because they reminded me so much of 
one kind of the Barbie shoes at the time.

Like others in the comments, I hadn't be aware as a kid that the books were originally English - well, the first six, anyhow - and in the beginning we even happily pronounced the author's name as if it were a German one. As a child, especially in the 70s, you still accepted a lot of things without overthinking them even if some of them sounded a bit strange.
I read a lot of different books, not all of them appropriate for my age, no doubt, but then that probably didn't mean the same as today, anyway.

So maybe I wouldn't have had a problem to read all English names, to hear about Lacrosse (which only came to Germany in the 90s, I wonder if I would have found it in our encyclopedia at all) and school uniforms and would have thought it fascinating, but maybe we kids would also have got bored with something that wasn't relatable to us. Who can say?
I do remember that I did wonder more than once how other children were just allowed to go off somewhere by themselves, in a horse wagon, for example 😂
Part of me longed to do something crazy like this, but in my heart I knew I would never have had the courage - or the necessary skills!

Domestication was one point in the video, another one was that there are a lot more "Hanni and Nanni" books than there are originals.
That's not just a German thing, though. Continuation books are sequels of books or book series written by a different author after the original author's death, authorized or unauthorized. Sometimes even unfinished books were finished by someone else, authorized by the rights holder.
The English "St Clare's" series" consists of six books written by Enid Blyton and three continuation books written by Pamela Cox much later.

In Germany, the series called "Hanni and Nanni" is so popular that there are 39 books at the moment of which 1 to 4, 11, and 13 were based on the original Blyton books, 19 and 20 on two of the Cox books. So they started making up their own stories even before using all originals.
We also have audioplays (remember my post about "Die drei ???"?) and even movies!
Quite a few people mentioned the Japanese anime series from the 90s as well which brought them to the books in the first place.

Interestingly, some of the commenters who know both said they preferred the German books because the English ones were meaner.
If that has to do just with the domestication or also because the German books were published about 20 years later and adapted to that time, I can't tell you.
Anyhow, Blyton has not only been criticized for her work being rather repetitive at times, but also sexist, xenophobic or racist stereotypes, so there have been updates to her work even in English.

What I can say is that Germany didn't have as many boarding schools as the UK at the time and still doesn't as far as I know. The books sold us a kind of romantic idea of them - community, pranks, and midnight feasts - which I think was fun to read about for us, but not necessarily something we would have wanted for ourselves, at least not the girls in my circles.

Of the "Malory Towers" series, there are six books by Blyton and six continuation books, again by Cox (from the 2000s).
I never had "Dolly" books - that was what the series of 18 books was called in Germany - and read them at a different friend's house, but can't really remember anything. I guess I could only handle one boarding school setting.
Again the German publisher changed the text and names heavily, also to adapt the books to the 60s - for example, gramophones became record players. Sometimes they even left out whole chapters.
Since 2020, there's has been a BBC series which follows the original books closely. There is already a dubbed German version for at least part of the series which, believe it or not, refrains from domestication. Don't tell me we can't learn anything 😉

The last series I want to mention is "The Famous Five", in German "Die fünf Freunde" = "The five friends".
Although I tutored a boy who had the whole collection and was willing to lend them to me, I never made it through the whole series, but I have a few 60s/70s editions from fleamarkets in my own children's book collection.
Blyton had planned just a few books in that series, but it was so successful commercially that she wrote 21 volumes in the end (and a few more series following the same pattern of children solving crimes while on holiday or visiting someone - my holidays were usually quite boring compared to theirs 😂).

Eileen Alice Soper illustrated the complete original set of
the "Famous Five" books

There are continuation books for this series as well, the French translator for it wrote 24 of them of which 18 were then translated into English and German (mostly the same ones)!
The Germans also got two books called "Geisterbände" = "ghost volumes". They had been published without permission of the rights holder and had to be withdrawn from the book market. You can still get them second-hand, but they are regarded as rarities and are more expensive.
There is also a whole bunch of German continuation books which have not been translated into English, that series ended in 2014.

If you think that's it, you're wrong.
There is an English series with the famous five having grown up, 15 obviously rather short books which are more satire as you can tell from titles like "Five Go Gluten Free" or "Five Escape Brexit Island". A few of them have been translated into German.
Then there are of course the TV shows, of which I know the one from the 70s myself, and the films and the audioplays (some English ones, a lot of German ones), the musical and gamebooks, comics and ...

Illustration by Eileen Alice Soper

So yeah, I didn't quite get some of the comments (not that I read all of them). Surprise, okay, I was surprised myself when I first found out, but the outrage, no. It's probably because people on the web are outraged at everything quickly these days.

Domestication was not that big a topic back then and not just German publishers were or are guilty of it. Also they had acquired the rights, and while you may well discuss the quality of the books (original and continuation, especially long-running series), audioplays, etc. and of course domestication in general, it didn't mean the Blyton estate was ripped off even if money was quite surely the motivation.
The main point is that the continuation books still have Blyton's name on the cover, but remember the Three Investigators books were never by Alfred Hitchcock and had them as the author, just like other book series were written by a syndicate, so not even that is that unusual.
Anyhow, the controversy goes on.

What really amazed me was how many people engaged speaking about their own memories in connection with the books.
My own memory is lying on the floor in my friend's room with my feet up and reading, and then we thought about adventures we could have.
For lack of boarding schools, smugglers, secret passageways, and horse wagons, however, we just did the usual - riding our bikes, picking flowers, playing in the forest - until we had grown too old for most of the books, anyway.

I read the first St Clare's book in English for this post and there was still that whiff of nostalgia although I cringed at some of the descriptions and I'm aware Blyton was not a very nice person and mother. Actually, her life would easily fill another post that I'm not keen on writing, though.
My guess is that it's probably more nostalgia for the time itself and the memories the books conjure up and not so much the books themselves (after writing this, I found an article about just that - childhood nostalgia in regards to Blyton).

I'm sorry if you are completely confused now, but I warned you.
Had you thought the children's book market used to be simpler in the olden days? I suppose it has always been a jungle out there, and I even talked about just three of the many series Blyton churned out (she wrote so much that people thought it was impossible she did it all by herself).

By the way, guess the recommendation I got when I went to YouTube on my TV after finishing this post - the 2009 TV film "Enid" which has been uploaded around the same time I started the post draft. So creepy!


Selected sources:

On Blyton:
1. These Enid Blyton novels don't exist - but Germans are obsessed with them anyway. On the channel of Spinster's Library on YouTube 
2. Fiona ?: Blyton by others: A guide to prequels, sequels and continuations. On: World of Blyton, January 22, 2020
3. Continuation books. On: The Enid Blyton Society
4. Pranay Somayajula: My Nostalgia for Enid Blyton is Complicated: Reckoning with the racism of my favorite childhood author. On: Electric Lit. November 2, 2022
5. Rowan Morrell: Five Have Adventures Abroad. Website on Enid Blyton continuation novels
6. The Soper Collection - Eileen Alice Soper
7. Jasmin Klein: Hanni und Nanni besuchen eine Ausstellung. On: Meine Südstadt. November 13, 2015 (in German)

On domestication and foreignization:
1. Ao Sun: Domestication and Foreignization in Translation: A Theoretical Exploration. On: J&Y Translation
2. Wenfen Yang: Brief Study on Domestication and Foreignization in Translation. In: Journal of Language Teaching and Research. 1(2010), 1, pp. 77 - 80 (Open Access)
3. Jekatherina Lebedewa: Mit anderen Worten - Die vollkommene Übersetzung bleibt Utopie. In: Ruperto Carola 3(2007) (in German)
4. Anna von Rath: Writing and translating are not neutral: an interview with Kavitha Bhanot. On: poco.lit., March 15, 2023