[Tirage numéroté 6/50; papier Bütten, reliure d'art plein maroquin émeraude de Preetorius] Franz von - Ein Geschlecht. Tragödie. - 1917

UNRUH, Fritz von.
A Lineage. A Tragedy. Leipzig, Kurt Wolff Verlag, March 1917. Printed by Offizin W. Drugulin.

A quarto volume, editor’s art binding in full emerald green morocco, boards framed by a double rule and small gold stars at the corners, at the center of the upper board a gold stamped motif showing Pegasus on its pedestal. Wear at the corners and spine ends. Spine with raised bands bearing the title and author in gold lettering, faux back in crème moiré silk, gilded head. Worn but solid binding with split guards.

UNIQUE FIRST EDITION UNIVERSALLY SOUGHT AFTER. One of 50 deluxe copies printed on laid paper (Büttenpapier) and bound in full morocco by the artist (head of the tirage, number VI of the limited edition of 50, from a total edition of 750). Binding design by Emil Preetorius.

Printed in homage “Dem Andenken meines Bruders Erich (1888, gefallen 1915)” (In memory of my brother Erich, fallen in battle in 1915).

An undisputed masterpiece of German Expressionist theatre, published at the heart of World War I by the prestigious Kurt Wolff publisher. Written at the Verdun front by Fritz von Unruh, this anti-war drama hurled the trauma of the trenches into a family tragedy of unimaginable metaphoric power.

This copy is an absolute collectible: it is the head of the tirage (numbered VI in Roman numerals on 50), dressed in its sumptuous editor’s morocco binding in green, of great classical sobriety and adorned with the golden Pegasus designed by the celebrated bibliophile and illustrator Emil Preetorius, and lined in moiré silk. The typography and the cuve impression produced by the renowned Drugulin house in Leipzig confer to this book the status of a 20th-century typographic art monument.

A Prussian officer from a illustrious military family, Fritz von Unruh was sent to the Verdun front in 1916. Deeply shaken by the barbarity and by the death of his own brother Erich on the battlefield in 1915, he wrote Ein Geschlecht on campaign notebooks, from the depths of shelter under bombardment. The manuscript was clandestinely brought back from the front. Upon its 1917 publication, the play was immediately banned for performance by Imperial military censorship before being staged in 1918 in Frankfurt, becoming the rallying cry of pacifism for an entire generation of German writers and artists in the interwar period.