Der Fuchs und die Trauben: Deutsche Tierdichtung des Mittelalters

Abstract

Here is another thick German anthology of fables. It includes 466 pages, but the last 250 or so are taken up with Renard. Four to twelve fables each are taken from Der Stricker, Gerhard von Minden, Hugo von Trimberg, Ulrich Boner, the Magdeburg Aesop, Steinhöwel, Johannes Pauli, Martin Luther, Hans Sachs, Erasmus Alberus, Burkard Waldis, and Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof. There are comments then about each of the authors and his works; four pages of clarifications and explanations; a good listing of sources, and a comment on this edition. Much of the material in this book may come from Alte deutsche Tierfabeln, put out by Rütten and Loening in Berlin in 1955. In fact, the verso of the title-page here acknowledges that publisher. Or perhaps there was a larger work that included the material in both Alte deutsche Tierfabeln and this book. The colored illustrations here come from a manuscript Die Blumen der Tugend from the fifteenth century; the black-and-white illustrations come from a 1549 edition of Reinke de Vos. It seems unusual that a West German publisher would have had its printing work done in East Germany, but that seems to be the case here.