Hauff,Fairy tales

The fairy tales of Wilhelm Hauff were published between 1826 and 1828 as almanacs. They are always embedded in a frame story, where people meet by chance under special circumstances and share the tales in a circle: "The Caravan" of the traveling merchants, accompanied through the desert by a mysterious stranger, "The Sheikh of Alexandria," who mourns his lost son, and "The Inn in the Spessart," a robbers' den where the travelers find themselves trapped and try to keep awake by telling stories. The first two almanacs reveal the great fascination that the Oriental cultural sphere held for the young Hauff, who was plagued by wanderlust in the Swabian province. For the second almanac, he had to add tales from other authors due to time constraints. The illustrations are based on the photorealistic woodcuts by Ludwig Burger, Theodor Weber, and Theodor Hosemann, created in 1871 at the xylographic institute of the publisher Eduard Hallberger. The entire text is set in Fraktur font, reviving the magic of the old original editions.