Sport und Körperkultur 1930

Stuttgart: Dieck & Co, 1929. First Edition. Card backed. Good. A calendar measuring 26 by 17.5 cm. 63 sheets, including cover, each sheet perforated to be ripped off. Each page following the cover represents a week of the year, with the end of a month shown as a partial week. On the top of the page there are boxes for each day, with a small space given for personalized entries, there are mostly b/w photos of athletes engaging in a wide range of sports and outdoor activies -- swimming, diving, canoeing, sailing, gymnastics, track sports, golf, tennis, skiing, skating, rugby, baseball, wrestling, calisthenics, fencing, etc. etc. A few entries are different, (truncated) with one featuring cartoons instead of a photo(s), another a photo of a sculpture. Accompanying the images is always a caption and usually also explanatory text, sometimes quite long, which speaks reverentially of the activity. The calendar captures the great upswing in sports and physical fitness that occurred during the twenties, with notably greater participation by women. This glorification of physical culture was by no means confined to Germany, although Germans generally embraced the movement with real fervor, to the point that one might interpret this calendar as a harbinger of Nazi ideology. In our view, such an interpretation is a real distortion, and we discern no political content in the entries that we have read. Condition: front cover and first two sheets reattached neatly, but can't promise will hold. The cover has edge and corner chipping. First two entry sheet have some, but less, roughness. The rest is clean, with light age toning. (Inventory #: 006858)