(Germany / Children's Literature / Illustrated Books) SEIDMANN-FREUD, Tom. Peregrin and the Goldfish: A Picture Book.
Berlin: Peregrin Press; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929. FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDITION. Oblong 4to - 9" x 11-1/2". [25] pp. including [12] full-page color illustrations. A highly significant and scarce masterpiece of Weimar-era children's book design, featuring the distinctive, geometric avant-garde illustrations of Martha Gertrude "Tom" Seidmann-Freud. Bound in the original publisher's tan cloth-backed color pictorial matte paper-covered boards. This unique English edition represents a fascinating cross-continental adaptation; as noted on the OCLC listing for this book: the inner flap of the original dust jacket notes that the English narrative was composed by Alice Dalgliesh of Teachers College, New York, who presented Seidmann-Freud's brilliant illustrations from the original German volume Die Fischreise to her youngest classes. The children invented their own simplified story for the character of Peregrin and his pet goldfish, Nickeling, which Dalgliesh shaped into a brief text before sending it back to the Peregrin Press in Berlin where it was then published.
The physical condition of the item is graded NEAR FINE (utilizing the standard antiquarian book grading scale for works on paper). The color pictorial boards are remarkably fresh and vibrant, exhibiting only faint discoloration and minor spotting around the perimeter edges, alongside one bumped lower fore-edge corner and another corner with trivial shelf wear. Internally, the volume is fine, clean, and securely bound, with the text and striking plates preserved in beautiful condition, save for a contemporary previous owner's neatly hand-inked signature on the front free endpaper.
Tom Seidmann-Freud and the Weimar Avant-Garde Style
Originally published in Germany as Die Fischreise, this work stands as a premier example of the progressive, play-centric graphic design movement that flourished during the Weimar Republic. Martha Gertrude Seidmann-Freud (niece of Sigmund Freud) adopted the male pseudonym "Tom" and established herself as a visionary force in early twentieth-century children's literature. Her artistic style seamlessly blended elements of Expressionism, New Objectivity, and Constructivism, utilizing delicate line work, structural geometric forms, and a refined stencil coloring technique (pochoir). The dreamlike fantasy of Peregrin's journey with his sentient goldfish reflects her deep interest in child psychology and autonomous imagination, treating the child reader as an active participant in visual interpretation. The collaboration with American educator Alice Dalgliesh underscores the international pedagogical impact of Seidmann-Freud's work, which sought to break away from nineteenth-century realism in favor of structured, symbolic modernism.
Series Bibliography, Census, and Market Scarcity
Because of the tragic trajectory of Seidmann-Freud's life and the systematic destruction of avant-garde and Jewish-authored literature during the rise of the National Socialist regime in Germany, copies of her books are exceptionally rare. Her independent publishing venture, Peregrin Press, folded quickly under financial duress, making the print runs of these co-published English editions exceedingly small. A current global sweep of the OCLC/WorldCat database locates only a minimal number of copies preserved in institutional special collections worldwide: confirming its immense scarcity on the open market. Surviving examples of this fragile oblong format are typically found heavily damaged, with split cloth backs or badly soiled and worn covers; the preservation of this bright copy in near-pristine internal condition represents an invaluable survival of interwar European graphic arts.
THIS EXCEPTIONAL, BRIGHT COPY OF TOM SEIDMANN-FREUD'S LANDMARK MODERNIST PICTURE BOOK, DOCUMENTING A UNIQUE PUPIL-LED LITERARY COLLABORATION AND EMITTING THE FINEST GRAPHIC SENSIBILITY OF THE 1920s GERMAN AVANT-GARDE, REPRESENTS A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, MODERNIST GRAPHIC DESIGN, OR WEIMAR REPUBLIC UNDERGROUND PRESSES.
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