Lothar Meggendorfer's "Lebende Bilder" [Living Pictures] Eight Fantastic Hand Colored Moveable Plate

[MOVABLE BOOK]. MEGGENDORFER, Lothar. Lebende Bilder [Living Pictures] von L. Meggendorfer. 15. Auflage.München [Munich]: Verlag von Braun & Schneider, [ca. 1890]. Fifteenth German Edition. Folio (page size: 11 7/8 x 9 1/8 inches; 301 x 232 mm.; Board size: 12 7/8 x 9 3/8 inches; 327 x 238 mm.). [1, foreword], [2-18] pp. Eight hand-colored lithograph plates with movable parts (included in pagination), each with a tab to set the scene in motion. Original color lithographed pictorial boards with black cloth backstrip. Small rectangular booksellers label on rear turn-in (Brentano's New York). Inner hinges expertly and almost invisibly repaired, all of the movable parts in perfect working order. Minimal rubbing to extremities of boards, still a spectacular copy of this rare title. According to OCLC the earliest edition that we can locate is 6. Auglage (ca. 1890) - there are very few copies of any of the original Braun & Schneider editions listed - we believe this 15th edition to have also been published around 1890.

“Meggendorfer’s reputation today is based almost solely on his ingenious mechanical picture-books for children. These he began to design during the late 1880s, and many of these books went into multiple German editions besides translations into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Bohemian, Hungarian, and Russian. Deservedly, he is considered the creator and chief innovator of moveable toy books, and his printed works are eagerly sought after by collectors of historical children’s literature. He produced books with moveable figures, transformation pictures segmented into three parts and thus interchangeable, books with pop-up designs, rotating wheels as well as four-panel slat pictures which change the illustrations through movement, and simply funny picture books for children that would certainly make them laugh and generally contributed to some educational benefit” (Justin G. Schiller’s Introduction to The Publishing Archive of Lothar Meggendorfer.

“There is little doubt that the most elaborate and ingenious movables ever produced were those of the German Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) made during the 1880s and 1890s…the mechanisms and operations of Meggendorfer’s books—not to mention the originality of his figures—are far superior to any others published before or since. The devices that operated the various figures in Meggendorfer’s books consisted of a series of inter-connecting cardboard levers sandwiched between the coloured illustration on the front of the oblong leaf and the dummy pasted behind it. The animated limbs and heads were cut-out models on the front of the picture, and moving the tab set the whole scene in motion” (Haining, Movable Books, p. 65).

The Plates:

1. "Herr Staberl" (Mr. Staberl)

2. "Die Jungfer Köchin" (The Spinster Cook)

3. "Der Klavierpieler" (The Piano Player)

4. "Der Schreiber" (The Writer)

5. "Der Herr Magister" (The School Master)

6. "Der Tiroler Sänger" (The Tirol Singer)

7. "Frikchen und der Kakadu" (Frikchen and the Cockatoo)

8. "Das naschafte Käklein"