Berliner Wanderverein Album

1896-1900. Hardcover. Good. Extraordinary manuscript with irresistible original Folk Art illustrations. Folio, 34 by 22 cm. Unpaginated, 39 pages with content. At least 15 of these pages with substantial illustrations. The album is a collection of what amount to birthday cards that were created for members of a hiking or outing club based in Berlin. These aren't cards as people today would visualize them; rather, they are long sheets of paper (or card stock) onto which were drawn, with colored pencil or crayon, or painted, artwork and also written some verse, which we assume was original generally-speaking. Several of the pages have a glazing, which has the effect of making the penciled drawings seem painted. The artwork was probably all done by Alfred Kunert, who signed or initialed much of it. Only a few small examples, mostly just page ornamentation, is unsigned and could possibly have been done by someone else, although we find that prospect doubtful. All the artwork is disarmingly naive, with much of the strange wondrous quality one associates with outsider art. Nothing is proportion. The buildings look as if they could serve as the set a German expressionist movie such as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". The people are rendered with a child-like primitivism. Many of the pictures depict a troupe of men, and sometimes women, strolling and lolling in rural settings. Often they are clutching steins or large goblets of beer or schnaps. They could be napping, smoking a cigar, gabbing away -- all the things one might do on a lazy sunny afternoon at a picnic. In one illustration, the men have their umbrellas out -- captured is one of the pitfalls of long hikes. In other words, recorded are the activities of the club, it would appear. Light-hearted humor suffuses these illustrations, and their naive style is in perfect harmony with this spirit. Apart from these illustrations, frogs were have a notable presence, appearing on three pages. In one of the whimsical drawings, one frog is balancing on his finger a giant peacock feather which the other one is daintily holding onto. There are also eight photos pasted into the album, three of which capture groups of the club members. These photos are a bit washed out but still give a kind of literal corroboration of the veracity of the drawings, as well as show us what the members actually looked like. In the back attached in batches are over 40 postcards of the places visited by this club. Condition: binding boards pressed down and uneven. Many of the leaves with chipped edges, cracking of the varnish, soiling, generally not too bad, and other wear.