110 - Wiechert, Ernst

Wiechert, Ernst Build a Wall Around Us (DSchild). Calligraphic handwritten manuscript in red and black ink. Circa 1937. 22 unnumbered leaves, 4°. Contemporary half-leather binding with a mounted handwritten title label in red and black. Erich Wiechert (1887–1950) was a German-language writer and teacher. He was one of the most widely read authors from the 1930s through well into the 1950s, as well as one of the writers of the “Inner Emigration” movement during the Nazi era. Wiechert’s best-known work, *Der Totenwald*, a report written in 1939 about his experiences in detention at the Munich police prison and at the Buchenwald concentration camp—which had been buried in a tin box in the garden of the Gagerthof until the end of the war—was published in Zurich in 1946. The transcript of Wiechert’s “Dankschrift” presented here first appeared on May 19, 1937, in the *Frankfurter Zeitung* and must have been written shortly thereafter, since the first book edition, published in Mainz in 1938, appeared under the expanded title *Vom Trost der Welt. Let a Wall Be Built Around Us.” — Margins partly with slight foxing. Calligraphic manuscript in red and black inks. Contemporary half-cloth binding with inlaid manuscript title. - Ernst Wiechert was a German teacher, poet, and writer whose humanist ideals and outspoken criticism of the National Socialist Party throughout the 1930s led to his imprisonment in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1938. He secretly kept a memoir of his imprisonment and buried the manuscript, which was published in 1945 as “Der Totenwald” (Forest of the Dead). Wiechert’s reflective essay addressed to young people, “Eine Mauer um uns baue,” was a “Dankaufsatz” (essay of thanks) written to mark his fiftieth birthday and was published in the sympathetic “Frankfurter Zeitung” on May 19, 1937. It appears certain that the present calligraphic manuscript by an anonymous admirer of Wiechert’s philosophy was copied from this edition of the *Frankfurter Zeitung* shortly after its publication, as the first separately published edition that appeared the following year included an additional phrase at the beginning of the title (“Vom Trost der Welt. Eine Mauer um uns baue”). — Occasional minor foxing on the page margins. This lot is subject to standard tax. A 24.95% buyer’s premium applies to the hammer price, and 7% (Books and Art) or 19% VAT (Manuscripts, Screenprints, Offset Prints, Photographs) applies to the final invoice amount within the European Union. This work is subject to the standard margin scheme. A 24.95% buyer’s premium applies to the hammer price, and 7% (books and art) or 19% VAT (manuscripts, screen prints, offset prints, and photographs) applies to the final invoice amount within the European Union.