The companion volume to Der Giftpilz — Hiemer's second children's book for the Stürmer-Verlag
Published in 1940 by Julius Streicher's Stürmer-Verlag in Nuremberg, Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher is Ernst Hiemer's follow-up to the notorious Der Giftpilz (1938). Framed as a cycle of illustrated animal fables for children, it deploys the imagery of crossbred, "degenerate" dogs, drone bees, lice, tapeworms, hyenas, and other pests as a systematic antisemitic allegory — one of the most explicit examples of National Socialist indoctrination material directed at the classroom and the nursery.
The copy offered here is an original first edition of 1940, bound in publisher's half cloth over pictorial boards, with 95 pages and the full complement of Willi Hofmann's colored illustrations. It is in good exterior and very good interior condition — boards lightly rubbed and edge-worn, a period owner's inscription to the front free endpaper, otherwise a clean and well-preserved example of a book that was heavily handled by its intended child readership and is rarely found today in acceptable condition.
Bibliographic Record
- Title
- Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher und andere besinnliche Erzählungen (The Poodle-Pug-Dachshund-Pincher and Other Reflective Tales)
- Author
- Ernst Hiemer (1900–1974) — editor-in-chief of Der Stürmer and close collaborator of Julius Streicher
- Illustrator
- Willi Hofmann — in-house illustrator of the Stürmer-Verlag
- Publisher
- Stürmer-Verlag (Verlag Der Stürmer), Nuremberg
- Year
- 1940
- Edition
- First edition
- Language
- German
- Collation
- 95 pp., with full-page and in-text colored illustrations by Willi Hofmann
- Binding
- Publisher's half cloth over pictorial boards, hardcover
- Dimensions
- Approx. 8-1/4" × 5-3/4" (ca. 21 × 14.5 cm)
- Weight
- Approx. 0.45 lbs (ca. 205 g)
- Condition
- Good exterior and very good interior condition. Boards slightly rubbed and stained, shelfwear along the edges, occasional very faint finger stains at the margins, period owner's inscription on the front free endpaper; otherwise clean, with only minor traces of use and age. One of the better surviving copies.
- Provenance
- Private German provenance; period owner's inscription on the front free endpaper.
Selected Views
Research Context
Ernst Hiemer (1900–1974) served as editor-in-chief of the weekly Der Stürmer under Julius Streicher and became, alongside Elvira Bauer, the Stürmer-Verlag's principal author of indoctrination literature directed at children. His first book for the press, Der Giftpilz (1938), is today one of the most widely studied examples of National Socialist children's propaganda. Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher (1940) is its deliberate continuation: twelve short "animal fables," each built around a species the text codes as parasitic, deceitful, or degenerate — the mongrel dog, the drone, the tapeworm, the hyena, the chameleon — and each closing with an explicit antisemitic moral for the young reader.
"Just as the Pudelmopsdackelpinscher looks like a dog but is no real dog, so the Jew looks like a man but is no real man." — paraphrase of the moral structure repeated throughout the volume, representative of Hiemer's method.
For historians of the Third Reich, of antisemitism, and of children's and schoolroom literature, the book is a document of extraordinary evidentiary weight. It belongs to the small, closely studied corpus of Stürmer-Verlag children's titles whose text, illustration, and material form together show how state-sanctioned antisemitism was engineered for classroom and nursery consumption. Copies surviving in the hand of their original child readership — inscribed, lightly marked, but otherwise intact — are precisely the artefacts of greatest interest to researchers today.
Appropriate Use
This first edition is offered for documented scholarly, educational, and archival acquisition by:
- university and research libraries, Holocaust- and genocide-studies institutes, and centres for the study of antisemitism;
- state, municipal, and private archives with holdings on the Third Reich, the Stürmer press, or National Socialist children's and schoolbook literature;
- museums and memorial sites responsible for the documentation, exhibition, and interpretation of National Socialist propaganda;
- historians, art- and book-historians, educators, and independent researchers working on indoctrination, the history of the book, or the visual culture of the Third Reich.
It is not offered for ideological, celebratory, or decorative use, and it is not offered for reproduction, reprinting, or any form of republication. By completing an order, every buyer — institutional or individual — accepts these conditions of use together with the seller's Terms & Conditions.
Legal & Ethical Framework
Under German law, distribution of propaganda materials of unconstitutional organizations is regulated by §§ 86, 86a StGB. Section 86 (3) StGB — the so-called Sozialadäquanzklausel — expressly exempts conduct serving "civic enlightenment, the defense against unconstitutional endeavors, art or science, research or teaching, reporting on contemporary events or history, or similar purposes." The jurisprudence of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has consistently affirmed that original historical imprints supplied for research, archival, educational, and museum purposes fall within this clause.
Shipment and buyer vetting are handled in line with that framework. Placing an order constitutes the buyer's binding acceptance of the seller's conditions of sale — including confirmation that the acquisition serves research, educational, documentary, archival, or scholarly purposes in the sense of § 86 Abs. 3 StGB and comparable provisions (e.g., Austria's Verbotsgesetz 1947). Individual scholars and private researchers are expressly included alongside institutional buyers. The seller reserves the right to decline any order that does not meet these criteria.