(AUSTRO-HUNGARY)
Orpheus-Blätter: 11. Olympiade 1878/79.

Orpheus-Blätter: 11. Olympiade 1878/79.
24 numbered issues, 1 extra issue, with 6-8 sheets each. Numerous often full-page and colored illustrations. manuscript text entirely in German. One leaf detached, very minimal wear. Original calf-backed gilt-titled boards, rubbed. Folio.

(Vienna?): September 9, 1878 - April 17, 1879.

Curious and lavishly designed satirical magazine, entirely in manuscript and embellished with many original drawings. It is likely the product of an (as yet) unidentified club with (mostly?) Jewish members, and located within the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, very possibly Vienna. The likelihood of additional volumes in the series is unclear, the statement "Eleventh Olympiad" might well be a humorous allusion.
Uncommonly unique, some of the drawings of a strikingly high production quality.
     The volume appears to be written by Austrian Jews, all of whom appear under Old Greek pseudonyms. The subject focus is on satires or caricatures of Jews (the usual portraits with unflattering features) - although the authors are not anti-Semites per se, but rather likely even Jews who poked fun of the familiar prejudices. The few mentioned addresses point to Vienna, but Brno and Moravia are also mentioned several times. The extra issue from September 9, 1878 focuses on the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina through the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1878. In several issues the Concordia ball, a traditional annual Viennese ball is featured in caricatures and articles.
     The manuscript was certainly created in the k.u.k. Monarchy, possibly in Bohemia or Moravia, but more likely in Vienna, as many reviews point to the theatrical life of a big city and some articles mention business in the "Graben,” the well-know street in Vienna’s first district.
     Contains fixed rubrics, such as: "Mixed News", "Kalauer and Meidinger" (two old Jews who gossip about the events of time), "Jewish Kegelbriefe by Chaim Kegeles …”, “Travel letters of Kalchas,” “The Records of the Philosophical Toolmaker Grundhubinger”, "Submitted", announcements and advertisements, Jewish antiques dealers` sales ads, “Jewish-German theater letters by Chaim Baff”, parodies of poems including the "Illustrations to Lindpaitner’s Fahnenwacht" with 6 caricatures - Op. 114, text by Feodor Löwe), parodies of illustrations by Wilhelm Busch, reproductions of caricatures by the French caricaturist Alfred Grévin (1827-92) with "improved" captions (mostly salacious), continuous evidence for the thesis of "Jewish self-hatred", including a page with 4 ink drawings, overwritten "Gallery of female beauties. Original drawings by Barbar Willomitzer,” whose first image could have been featured in the “Stürmer” etc. Two places allegedly censored (blank or pasted over, with the comment “censured! ").
     
Overall, a very curious example of Jewish cultural life in the Habsburg monarchy.