ARNIM, Achim von, & Clemens Brentano.

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Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Alte deutsche Lieder. First edition of this compilation of over 700 German folk songs, regarded as "one of the most important and influential documents of the German Romantic movement" (Garland, p. 150), which was the direct inspiration for the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. This copy is from the finely-bound library of the eminent Austrian collector Duke Albert von Sachsen-Teschen, with his initials stamped within a gilt sunburst in each spine compartment. This copy retains all five ornately engraved title pages, including the often-lacking sectional title of part IV. The poems' primary themes of love, journeys and soldiering remained a touchstone for the German Romantic consciousness throughout the 19th century and inspired Mahler's 1905 song cycle of the same name. Whereas previous anthologies tended to collect poetry of different nations, "the Wunderhorn was deliberately rousing, popular and national: the art of the folk" (Sams, p. 556). Each poem is accompanied by an indication of its origin, and around a third of the poems are attributed to oral sources. Arnim (1781-1831) and Brentano (1778-1842), however, often changed or added to the texts they collected without comment. Bound at the rear of volume 1 is an essay by Arnim which reflects the nationalist impulse behind the Wunderhorn. He prophecies a bright new age through the enrichment of the "reading classes", in which the German people are united despite their differences in dialect, creed,

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