The Tempest, illustrated by Edmund Dulac
The Tempest (1912), translated by A.W. Schlegel and illustrated by Edmund Dulac
This edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest was acquired by the Munich Shakespeare Library in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It features a German translation of The Tempest by A.W. Schlegel, already a standard at the time of publication (1912), and beautiful Art Nouveau illustrations by Edmund Dulac, a book illustrator who was born in France but spent the majority of his career in Britain. Dulac is a figurehead of the "golden age of book illustration", which spans the first third of the twentieth century. Alongside Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen, he was one of the most important artists working in the genre. Unusually for the time, Dulac worked mostly in gouache and watercolour, taking advantage of new technologies which allowed him to do without ink lines to "hold" the colours. The watery effect of these techniques is of course particularly suited to the maritime world of The Tempest.
"Legt das Schiff hart an den Wind!", page 4
Before and after The Tempest, Dulac illustrated a variety of fairy tale collections, such as The Arabian Nights (1907), The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales (1910) and Stories from Hans Christian Andersen (1911). Notable in particular for its intense and unusual colour combinations, his artwork is perfectly suited to evoking the fantastic, unreal atmosphere that Shakespeare's play (for which the term Märchendrama, fairy tale play, is still sometimes used in German) shares with even older tales of loss, danger and magical rescue.
"Gefangen, Herr, im Lindenwäldchen", page 96
Luxe picture books like the ones that Dulac specialized in fell out of fashion after the First World War.The copy in the Munich Shakespeare Library features a dedication dated April 1918.
It is signed by Gretel Rothschild, probably the wife of Ebo Rothschild, the German-Israeli lawyer who emigrated from Germany to Spain in 1933 and then to Chile in 1939. The dedicatee, Rothschild's "dear, admired friend and teacher", is Mina Tobler (1880-1967) a Swiss-born pianist who spent the majority of her life in Heidelberg. Tobler was a renowned piano teacher and a close friend of both Max Weber and his wife. Her Tempest came to the library via her great-nephew, who kindly offered information about its provenance. It now holds pride of place among a small but growing collection of artists' books.
Mina Tobler (Tobler family archive, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mina_Tobler#/media/Datei:Mina_Tobler.jpg)
