Schicklgruber

A German collector has recently published a work of Teutonic profundity on the heirs of Struwwelpeter. In some 500 double-column pages he has described over 1600 items which derive in one way or another from Heinrich Hoffmann's classic picture book of 1845 (see BfK 119, November 1999). Among the most surprising of these is no. 1254 which was discovered in an Oxford bookshop a few years ago and is now presented to a wider world in a skilfully edited facsimile.

Schicklgruber takes its title from the lampooning of Adolf Hitler that went on in Britain from the time of his coming to power. The adaptation of Struwwelpeter to this end is already known in Humbert Wolfe's Truffle Eater of 1933 and Robert Spence's Struwwelhitler of 1941, but what makes Schicklgruber surprising is its publishing in 1943 by Thacker's Press of Calcutta. It was devised for the British community and the forces in India, with profits going to the Red Cross, but until that lucky find in Oxford it was unknown to history.

As a political parody - a notoriously fragile genre - the book is as good as could be expected. It follows closely both the graphic design and the (English) verse patterns of its original and adapts Hoffmann's cautionary stories to its topical purposes in a way that still retains interest. (Joe Stalin is the dog who takes a chunk out of Cruel Adolf's trousers; von Keitel, the pincer man [very neat], snips off poor Francie's thumbs.)

As a facsimile the present production is a credit to its German publishers, who have fortunately found an English distributor. The full colour is carefully reproduced, and the editor, Walter Sauer of Heidelberg University (a Struwwelpeter specialist), has not only given parallel texts of this version and its English original, but has added for German readers a brilliant translation of Colling-Pyper into his own language. A bi-lingual introduction sets out all the discoverable facts about the book, which (final surprise) he has been able to ascertain from Margaret Stavridi, the illustrator, who is alive and well and living (aged 94 or thereabouts) in sheltered accommodation in London.