Description

[Tatzelwurm. Illustrated Newspaper for Mountaineers. Pub Newspaper for the 5th Gentlemen’s Evening of the Alpine Association – Section Bavaria. Munich, March 10, 1900]

A rare ephemeral newspaper, possibly issued only in one number for a “Gentlemen’s Evening of the Bavarian Alpine Association” in 1900, contains comical articles, poems, caricatures and other drawings, with motifs of drinking, seducing women and mountaineering. Tatzelwurm is a mythical lizard-like creature, living in the Alps.

The Alpenverein-Sektion Bayerland (Alpine Association – Section Bavaria) was founded in 1895 and the authors and portraits in the magazine are those of the pioneers of the Bavarian mountaineering.

The magazine is written in German language in a decorative Kurrent (deutsche Kurrentschrift) and multiplied in the technique of hectograph. The artist of the cover illustration and several illustrations inside was otherwise quiet and unnoticeable member of the association Emanuel Kaiser, signed with his nickname Schiacha Teifi, what is a curse in Bavarian dialect meaning “ugly devil” (Walter Welsch, Geschichte der Sektion Bayerland des Deutschen Alpenvereins e.V., Von der Gründung der Sektion bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg 1895 – 1914, p. 65).

The magazine, which was probably handed out only at the evening of the event, appears to be unrecorded and we could not find any institutional copies nor any reverences to it in the literature available to us.