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Stowe, H. B.; W. Frey, translator and adapter; R[udolf Scipio]. Waldheim.

Onkel Toms Hütte. Eine Erzählung aus dem Sklavenleben [bound with] Ein blinder Passagier : Eine Seegeschichte.

Mülheim a. d. Ruhr: Julius Bagel, [1899]. 8vo (7.75” x 5”), three quarters red cloth and red paper over boards, color-illustrated title piece at upper cover, gilt title at spine. Chromolithographic frontis., 109 pp., [1 blank, 1 p. table of contents], 1 full-page chromo. illus. CONDITION: Covers good+ with some rubbing and wear to extremities, contents very good.

A scarce and brightly-illustrated German translation and adaptation for children of Stowe’s classic.

This abridged edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which we find announced as a new publication in an 1899 issue of the Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel (German Book Trade Gazette), is illustrated with a scene of the shackled Uncle Tom bidding farewell to a distraught woman—likely his wife—before he is sold. The bright color frontispiece shows the dying Eva (Uncle Tom, with clasped hands, kneeling at her bedside), and a another color plate showing the death of Uncle Tom himself. It is bound with a short story titled Ein blinder Passagier : Eine Seegeschicte (A Blind Passenger : an Tale of the Sea) by Rudolf Scipio Waldheim.

The first German translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared in Germany in 1852, and was an immediate hit. The owner of a beer garden in southwest Berlin—whose name was Thomas—was such a fan of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s work that he called his establishment “Onkel Tom’s Hütte,” and although the restaurant is gone, a subway station, commercial street, and a nearby modernist housing development by prominent modernist architect Bruno Taut still carry the name.

Translator and author Wilhelm Frey (1833–1909) was born to Jewish parents in the western Austrian state of Vorarlberg. He spent some ten years of his early career working as an administrator for the railway and writing musical and cultural reviews for several newspapers, but in 1873 became an author, publishing travel and adventure series with both Julius Bagel in Mülheim and E. Bartels in Berlin. He died in Vienna.

Julius Bagel, Jr. (1861–1929) was a German printer and publisher from a Huguenot family. His grandfather, Johann Bagel, established a bookbinding business in Wesel in 1801 which grew into a sizeable printing establishment, and his father, Julius Bagel Sr., founded a publishing firm in Mülheim an der Ruhr in 1855, which he left to the management of his son in the 1890s, following the death of his wife. The business was successful and published several series, mostly focused on young readers and presenting, according to one ad, “morally purified” tales of adventure and faraway lands. It suffered during the First World War and went into receivership in 1924 (Schöfert).

OCLC records just four holdings in the United States, at Youngstown State University, Ocean State Libraries, University of Virginia, and Providence Public Library.

REFERENCES: “Wilhelm Frey” via the Karl-May-Gesellschaft online; “Erschienene Neuigkeiten des deutschen Buchhandels,” Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel, October 7, 1899; Schöfert, Arne. “Taschenromane” at Das Reichskolonialamt online.

Item #9225

Price: $475.00

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