Typographic fairy tale
SCHWITTERS, Kurt, Käte STEINITZ, and Theo VAN DOESBURG. Die Scheuche. Märchen. No. 3. Typographisch gestaltet. Hannover: Aposs. 1925.
Oblong 4to (205 x 240 mm). Original cream wrappers printed in blue; pp. [12], printed alternately in red and blue; a few small marks to wrappers, minor crease to lower edge of the front cover, small crease to corner of lower cover; 3 leaves fragile along the fold, but generally an exceptionally well preserved and clean copy.
First edition, featuring the rarest variant of the front cover, of this milestone of avant-garde typography and children’s book design.
Die Scheuche (The Scarecrow), the third children’s book published by Aposs and designed by Kurt Schwitters and Käte Steinitz, follows Hahne Peter (Rooster Peter, 1924) and Die Märchen vom Paradies (Fairy Tales of Paradise, 1924). Assisted by typesetter Paul Vogt, Schwitters developed an innovative illustrative typography that blended Dada and De Stijl, transforming text into figurative imagery. The fairy tale follows the adventures of a scarecrow, tormented by mocking birds and mistreated by its creator. Part of the print run was published as issue 14/15 of Schwitters’s avant-garde magazine Merz.
De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg played a key role in shaping Die Scheuche’s radical design, which, like El Lissitzky’s About Two Squares (1922), relied exclusively on typographic elements to create visual impact. This collaboration represents a pivotal experiment in avant-garde typographic innovation.
Three distinct front cover designs exist. Two variants include the subtitle “Märchen,” one of which, as seen here, also features the inscription “Aposs NO 3 Hannover” rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise. The third variant omits the “Märchen” designation, replacing it with “Merz 14/15” to indicate the book’s publication as an issue of Merz.
#2121207