Der Orchideengarten (‘The Orchids-garden’) subtitled Phantastische Blatter or (‘Fantastic Pages’) was a short-run German magazine which was published from January, 1919 until November, 1921. Published by Dreiländerverlag; each of its 51 issues contained 24 pages, printed on rough book paper. Its editor was World War I news correspondent and freelance writer Karl Hans Strobland Alfons von Czibulka.
Founded four years before the American magazine ‘Weird Tales’ (March 1923+); Der Orchideengarten is considered to be the first ‘fantasy’ genre magazine as well as forming part of the ‘supernatural-horror’ genre. Each issue included a wide selection of new and reprinted stories by both German and foreign language writers including: Voltaire, Guy de Maupassant, Théophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Charles Dickens, Pushkin, Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and H. G. Wells, to name but few.
But it wasn’t just about the stories. The magazine’s many illustrations included reproductions of medieval woodcuts and pictures by artists and illustrators such as:
- Gustave Dore and Tony Johannot,
- Rolf von Hoerschelmann (1885–1947),
- Otto Linnekogel (1892–1981),
- Karl Ritter (1888-?),
- Heinrich Kley,
- Alfred Kubin,
- Eric Godal (1899–1969),
- Carl Rabus, (1898–1982)
- Otto Nückel; and
- Max Schenke (1891–1957).
What “phantastische blatter” they must have been.
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