KORNILOV, Boris; Olga HALPERN (translator); Konstantin ROTOV (illustrator). Wie der Bär vom vielen Honig plötzlich Zahnschmerzen bekam.

The Dangers of a Sweet Tooth

KORNILOV, Boris; Olga HALPERN (translator); Konstantin ROTOV (illustrator). Wie der Bär vom vielen Honig plötzlich Zahnschmerzen bekam. [Moscow:] Verlagsgenossenschaft ausländischer Arbeiter in der UdSSR. [1936].

Large 4to. Original colour-printed self-wrappers; pp. [16]; colour-illustrated throughout; corners and extremities expertly restored; lightly toned throughout, some spotting (heavier to final leaf); a very good copy.

First German edition, very rare, of this cautionary tale for children, translated by the anti-fascist activist and refugee Olga Halpern for the use of children of German Bolsheviks working in the USSR.

This charming children’s book was first published in Russian in 1935 as Как от мёда у медведя зубы начали болеть and warns of dental consequences resulting from a bear’s overindulgence in honey. It was authored by Soviet poet Boris Kornilov (1907–1938), murdered at the age of thirty-one during Stalin’s purges, three years after the publication of the first edition.

This edition was published by the Verlagsgenossenschaft ausländischer Arbeiter in der UdSSR, Moscow’s foreign publishing house, established in 1931 and renamed the Verlag für fremdsprachige Literatur in 1938. Rotov was a Soviet artist, cartoonist, and illustrator who worked for Pravda and other prestigious Soviet publications. As his case confirms, talent attracted danger in those days: he was sent to the GULAG in 1940, but was rehabilitated after Stalin’s death in 1954.

Born in Mohyliv-Podilskyi in present-day Ukraine, Olga Halpern (née Rapaport, 1887–1967) was educated at home by Russian tutors and German governesses, later auditing courses at the universities of Heidelberg and Vienna, qualifying as a teacher at the latter. In Vienna, she began working with Hungarian Communist exiles and was involved in organising aid for Russia following the famine of 1921–22. In 1926 she moved to Berlin, where she joined the Communist Party of Germany and became involved with the Bund proletarisch-revolutionärer Schriftsteller (League of Proletarian–Revolutionary Writers). From 1929 she carried out confidential assignments for the Soviet embassy, and she fled Germany in March 1933. She produced this translation in Moscow, where she lived with her second husband, Andor Gábor (1884–1953), for twelve years, sharing a flat with the anti-Nazi writers Johannes and Lilly Becher for several years.

OCLC finds a single copy, at Princeton. No copies traced on Library Hub.

Cotsen 5885.

SKU: 2118473