Buch der erfüllten Wünsche [Book of Fulfilled Wishes], by Tom Seidmann-Freud. Potsdam: Müller & Kiepenheuer, 1929. German.

Book illustrated with Seidmann-Freud's delicate and lyrical drawings, colored in pochoir.

Tom Seidmann-Freud (1892-1930), painter, illustrator, and author, native of Vienna; niece of Sigmund Freud. Notwithstanding the brevity of her career (cut short by her suicide at age 38), Seidmann-Freud had a profound impact on 20th-century children's literature. Her distinctive style of illustration – characterized by simple, delicately colored geometric forms – is suggestive of the influence of "Neue Sachlichkeit" ("New Objectivity"), a modernist art movement that developed in Germany in the interwar period.

[12] ff. 25.5 cm. Book in good condition, slightly stained and creased. Blemishes, minor tears, stains and marginal abrasions to cover.

See:
1. Ayala Gordon, "Hebrew Illustrations". 2005, pp. 140.
2. Marit Benisrael and Ada Wardi, "The Book of Tom", 2022, pp 152.

Aleph-Bet, Hermann Fechenbach. Berlin: Schocken, [1936?].

Picture book, with twenty-two color drawings of animals, in order of the Hebrew alphabet, by Hermann Fechenbach. Enclosed are twenty-two loose plates with the same illustrations in black and white and one plate with a preface in English and in German (all placed in a pocket inside back board).
Fechenbach explains in his preface: "I have painted for you twenty-two different animals… You can also copy them on tracing paper, cut them out with scissors and color them. For the tracing and coloring I have added twenty-two drawings, so that you need not spoil the picture-book…".

Hermann Fechenbach (1897-1986), German-Jewish artist, illustrator and printmaker. Fought and was seriously wounded in WWI. He studied art in Erfurt and Stuttgart. In 1938, after an unsuccessful attempt to immigrate to Palestine, he settled with his wife in England, where he worked as an artist. In 1940, he was interned as an enemy alien in the Hutchinson Internment Camp on the Isle of Man, along with many other German and Austrian Jews. He remained there for ten months, during which he created a series of linocuts titled "My Impressions as Refugee". After his release, he remained in England, where he continued his artistic work until his death.

[24] pp. + 23 plates, approx. 24X22.5 cm. Good condition. Foxing. Inked stamp inside front board. Abrasions to binding edges.

Grete Wolf-Krakauer (1890-1970), sketches for a game of blocks intended to teach the Hebrew letters. [Jerusalem, 1930s].
Ink and watercolor on paper and tracing paper.
Five small sketches providing the outline for a game of blocks. Four of the sketches present scenes featuring objects, creatures, or sites, each representing one of six letters ("aryeh" [lion] for "aleph, " "bayit" [house] for "beth, " "gamal" [camel] for "gimel, " and so forth, and next to it the corresponding letter). One sketch, on tracing paper, is divided up into 12 squares, with each square featuring a word that represents one of the letters, and next to it a small illustration (a picture of a lion next to "aryeh, " a house next to "bayit, " and so on. The sketch featuring the letters of the second half of the Hebrew alphabet is missing.
These five sketches were used in the preparation of a game of blocks meant as a teaching aid introducing the Hebrew alphabet. Each card would be cut into six parts, with each part being pasted onto one of the sides of a block. When a player would arrange the blocks in the proper order of the Hebrew alphabet, the full illustrated scene would unfold.

Five sketches, approx. 12X8 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes. Tears to the sketch drawn on tracing paper.