Pop-Up, Paper Mechanics, Lothar Meggendorfer

[Laurence Finston]

Lothar Meggendorfer, as some (many?) people here may know, was a German illustrator and pioneer of the pop-up book and paper mechanics of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Movable Book Society awards the Meggendorfer Prize for the Best Paper Engineering – Trade Publications biannually.

The State and University Library of Lower Saxony, Göttingen, Germany, has a branch library for books for children and young people. Several years ago, they acquired a private library of children's books containing a large number of books by Meggendorfer. In addition to books they already had, they now have approximately 30 books by or about Meggendorfer in their collection.

I've known about this for a long time, but it's taken me until yesterday to finally get over there and take a look at them. I've attached several photos.

[Philip]

Interesting. Chances of me seeing them for myself are very, very slim, so thank you for the photos.

[Laurence Finston]

You're welcome. The chances may not be as slim as you think, though. Some years ago, they were reissued by a publisher here, Esslinger. That's how I found out about them, when I saw them in a couple of bookstores. I couldn't afford them at the time, however.

Some of the books in the collection were originals, but others were the reprints. And probably some of both kinds found their way to libraries in the UK.

I have a book of essays by Maurice Sendak (author of "Where the Wild Things Are", among many other children's books) and there's one about Meggendorfer. He made him sound very special.

I was a little disappointed, to be honest. He was a good graphic artist, to be sure, but I don't like that style too much. I much prefer Wilhelm Busch, Winsor McCay, Ernest Shepard or Beatrix Potter, for example.

The pop-ups are very well executed and they were probably innovative at the time, but it seems like standard stuff nowadays. Maybe I'm not giving it its due.

I would have taken more photos but they asked me not to photograph entire books (although they're in the public domain) and nothing else really jumped out at me (so to speak). I do like the man in the tailcoat in the last two photos, though.

[bluesky]

Thank You, Laurence, for nice presentation!

Yes, the style of the Artist can be named "old fashion", from today's point of view...
Anyway, books like that was unique in My child-time also and they are still today very interesting.
Thanks for sharing it with us!

[Laurence Finston]

You're welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[C9B]

These are very interesting to me. I’m going to look in our extensive public library collections to see what might be available to view.
Jon

[Laurence Finston]

I'm glad you find this interesting. I only live about 10 minutes away from this library by foot so if anyone is interested enough, I could easily make a few more photos. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't do close-ups very well.

There are five books by Meggendorfer in print. I looked up the Thienemann-Esslinger-Verlag (publishing house) and this is the website: Startseite
Unfortunately, it seems that they only have a German-language site.

I didn't know this before, but this publisher publishes at least two of the most famous and respected children's books authors, namely Michael Ende and Otfried Preußler, who are both excellent writers. I like Ende's books for adults even better than his children's books. The publisher must be doing extremely well because their books are still selling a fairly long time after their deaths.

The title of the book by Maurice Sendak is "Caldecott and Co. Notes on Books and Pictures".

[Laurence Finston]

Originally Posted by Laurence Finston

There are five books by Meggendorfer in print.

I should have said, from the publisher I mentioned. I haven't checked anything else.