West-östlicher Divan. Munich, Hans von Weber, 1910.

One of 100 copies of the third Druck für die Hundert, printed on uncut handmade paper; copy no. 87, printed for Richard Laukhuff. Chancery folio (278 × 187 mm).

Original vellum binding with gilt fillets and title to cover, signed Carl Sonntag Jr., Leipzig (immaculate; uncut handmade paper).

Goethe's West-östlicher Divan is the most concrete poetic embodiment of his idea of Weltliteratur. To Eckermann in 1827 he declared that the epoch of world literature was at hand [Eckermann, 31 January 1827]; in the Divan itself he wrote that Orient and Occident were no longer to be separated. The book grew from his encounter with Hafiz through Hammer-Purgstall and turned German poetry outward toward Persian and Islamic lyric. This Hans von Weber edition gives that idea a refined bibliophile form, from the Munich luxury-publishing culture that made canonical texts into ceremonial objects.

Copy no. 87 was printed for Richard Laukhuff in Cleveland, whose bookstore became a conduit for modern and avant-garde European literature in the American Midwest. A Munich luxury Divan printed for Laukhuff makes Goethe's Weltliteratur idea material, East and West relayed through Weimar, Munich and Cleveland, held together by the subscription, the binding and the named copy.

PROVENANCE

Richard Laukhuff, Cleveland bookseller; copy no. 87 printed for him by name.

The Heribert Tenschert Collection.

REFERENCES

Hans von Weber, Drucke für die Hundert; Julius Rodenberg, Deutsche Pressen (Zürich, 1925); Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe, 31 January 1827; Goethe, West-östlicher Divan (Moganni Nameh; Gingo Biloba); Hendrik Birus (ed.), West-östlicher Divan (Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1994).