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book (design) story #311

b. traven:
ein general kommt aus dem dschungel

allert de lange, amsterdam, 1940
printer: hungaría buchdruckerei, a.-g., budapest
size: 21 x 14 cm
designer: (unknown)

this book is the last volume of the "caoba cycle" or jungle series about the mexican revolution by legendary novelist b. traven (??-1969). while all of traven's novels were first published by the büchergilde gutenberg in berlin and after 1933 in zürich (see stories 8, 9, 10), "general from the jungle" was printed in budapest and published by allert de lange in amsterdam - only months before the nazi invasion in may 1940. already in 1939 a swedish translation ("djungelgeneralen") was published by halmström in stockholm.

why this break-up between the büchergilde and its best-selling author? apparently, in 1937 the executive board of the exiled büchergilde in zürich was not happy with the original text and advised traven to revise the manuscript. on january 14 traven officially withdraw from the büchergilde zürich (source: btraven.com).

the true reason may have been: traven did all his business in europe through his agent josef wieder who worked with the büchergilde zürich in the 1930s. however in 1938 wieder got into trouble with the büchergilde management. in the end they decided to sack wieder - but traven was loyal to his agent and wrote angry letters to büchergilde manager bruno dressler. this can be read in luise dressler's book "erfüllte träume" (1997) in which she quotes a lot of letters.

interestingly there is a 1936 letter (reproduced in luise dressler's book) by traven to dressler in which the writer recommends to retranslate the american versions of his books back to german "because the american is much better than the german original" - a rather unusual suggestion for a writer! but the büchergilde actually followed traven's advice in their later (re-)editions.

the designer of the dustjacket and cover is not credited. it is somewhat similar to the "marsch" jacket but i have not seen an attribution. this book's design is not particularly modernist; i included it because i am just a fan of traven's and his nice original editions.