Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

De Beestmensch (The Subhuman)

Berlin: Nordland Verlag, ca. 1942. First Dutch edition. Softcover. Folio (14 x 10 1/2"). Unpaginated. [52]pp. (including wrappers). Original photo-illustrated wrappers with red lettering to front cover, and black lettering to back cover.

The photo-credits are listed on back cover, including Heinrich Hoffmann, Hans Retzlaff, Charlotte Rohrbach and other photographers and agencies. Compare to the German edition the credits for Kattwinkel (1) and Saebens-Worpswede (1) do not appear on the Dutch list of credits though only one of the photographs of the German edition is missing and substituted with another photograph. The Dutch edition was produced in cooperation with the Graphic Workshop Jupp Daehler (Graphische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Jupp Daehler) and some shows photographs cropped differently and variant captioning.

This Nazi propaganda magazine published under the orders of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler is definitely one of the most gruesome and derogatory anti-Jewish publications of the Third Reich. Beginning with a quote from Himmler, the introduction to the book explains that "certain populations are so biologically inferior to even average humans that they are virtually incapable of understanding how different they are from the remainder of humanity. They know nothing of culture, the plow, factory machinery or even something as basic as a house."

Depicting the Russian and the Jewish people as "Untermenschen" (Subhuman), a term used in Nazi Ideology describing Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and Soviet Bolsheviks, the magazine was published by the SS publishing company Nordland around 1942, after the invasion of Russia. This work is profusely illustrated throughout with numerous annotated photogravures arranged in a way to show the contrast between the Jewish / Untermensch world and the world of Aryan Germanic people.

Indeed, photographs of a ghastly group of Soviet children on the left are facing healthy German children on the right; Grotesque Jewish art objects made from cheap materials on the left are opposed to German super realism of the finest materials on the right; Russian churches destroyed and/or pillaged by the "Bolsheviks" on the left are opposed to magnificent German churches, etc.

Text in Dutch. Some rubbing along spine and light wear along edges with minor creasing and chips. Cover loose at upper staple and circular white sticker with red ink handwritten indicators (b 23 bis) pasted to lower right corner. Block with minor creasing at foredge corners and some foxing along edges of back cover. Wrappers and interior in overall good+ to very good condition. g+ to vg. Item #44724

Price: $950.00