267 - Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926). The Ballad of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke. Text carved in wood and illustrated with 14 woodcuts by Hermann Schardt (1912–2020). Essen, F.W. Rohden (Printer), 1933–35, 11 double leaves, original cloth-bound, and accompanied by 39 of the 41 original woodblocks used, 2.9 × 5.8 to 29.1 × 20 cm.

Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875–1926). The Ballad of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke. Text carved in wood and illustrated with 14 woodcuts by Hermann Schardt (1912–2020). Essen, F.W. Rohden (Printer), 1933–35, 11 double leaves, original cloth-bound, and accompanied by 39 of the 41 original woodblocks used, 2.9 × 5.8 to 29.1 × 20 cm. With the intention of creating a unified design for *The Cornet*, one of the most significant monuments of German linguistic art, Hermann Schardt not only provided the illustrations but also composed the text himself: letters carved from wood as if for a single-sheet print, arranged line by line in Fraktur typeface in a small, approximately 9-point “bread type” format, formed into blocks according to a preconceived page layout. As a calligrapher and illustrator, he thus created a masterpiece of artistic craftsmanship that has no equal in more recent book printing. According to the imprint, it was created in 1933 and printed in a very small edition by 1935 at the latest, for in that year this masterpiece was awarded the first Dürer Prize in Nuremberg. For printing, this “Cornet” was scaled to a format of 24.5 × 25.5 cm, using only the printed pages, and bound in the style of a block book. The title page features a six-line quotation from the Tegernsee collection of letters, dating from around 1180, printed in red according to Schardt’s handwritten instructions. One of the few known copies of this first edition, described in the University of Illinois Library (Gerhard Mayer Collection of Rainer Maria Rilke, No. 620): “Fraktur type, interspersed (scattered, finely distributed) with woodcut illustrations… Privately illustrated, printed, and bound by Hermann Schardt.” The artist, who—as a former student of Rössing—shows himself here not merely as a master scribe, executes the woodcut with an elegant line and a light hand, so it is not surprising that the illustrations are occasionally described as pen-and-ink drawings, a reference primarily to the reprint commissioned by Hermann Schardt in the early 1960s. It was produced—this time not on vellum, as in the first edition, but on Japanese paper—in the printing workshop of the Folkwang School, where it was bound in red goatskin; the print run was “in any case fewer than one hundred copies,” according to the Schardt family. A copy of this edition is also enclosed here, bearing a handwritten dedication by Hermann Schardt to members of his family; this copy is further enhanced by a woodcut bound in as a separate sheet. The present first edition is missing two leaves from the first sheet; another sheet is bound twice. – Provenance: Estate of Hermann Schardt.