Weimar horror

Der Orchideengarten ('The Orchids-garden') was a German magazine published from 1919 to 1921. It is considered to be the first fantasy magazine. Also described as 'supernatural horror', it was edited by the writer Karl Hans Strobl and by artist and writer Alfons von Czibulka, both Austrian-born.  

Neither Strobl nor Czibulka had much connection to Weimar Berlin, and I must confess knowing nothing about the Fantasy or Horror genres, and still I choose to write about Der Orchideengarten in this blog because of its daunting images, something between Surrealism and Expressionist, with a whiff of Jugendstil. It may not be completely uninteresting that Strobl converted later to antisemitism and became a high official in the Nazi writers organization. 

The magazine included a selection of new and reprinted stories by both German-language and foreign writers. The main source of the translated material Der Orchideengarteen published was French literature : Charles Nodier, Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Guillaume Apollinaire. Other known writers were Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Amelia Edwards, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Karel Čapek.

Illustrations included pictures by Gustave Dore and Tony Johannot, as well as contemporary artists such as Rolf von Hoerschelmann, Otto Linnekogel, Karl Ritter, Heinrich Kley, Alfred Kubin, Eric Godal, Carl Rabus, Otto Nückel and Max Schenke.