[Album] MMMM Italien 1936 (German Travel Poem)

Very Good. An extraordinary photo travelogue or journal in verse kept by the German Ernst Mayer in April to May1936 of a vacation he, his brother and their wives took by car to Norhtern Italy (Lake Garda, Brescia, Verona, Padua, Venice, Parma, etc.) and back through Switzerland. There is not a word about the political upheaval back home by the middle aged, comfortably situated traveler so inspired by the South. The verse reveals a depth of involvement and emotion with art encountered that is certainly uncommon, now and even then. While a fair amount of the poetry is devoted to naming the sights, it rises to a higher level when reflecting on the trip as (truncated) a whole at the end. Oblong, 29 by 33 cm. Nineteen leaves with content, some on both sides, some only on the recto, and tissue guards with a spider web diaper lie between each leaf. Blank leaves in the back. The front cover is decorated with paste-on labels from the cities and resorts visited such as ere covered the luggage of the globetrotting traveler, as well as colorfully inked names of the places visited. The boards have splitting of plies, probably the result of contraction of one layer at a different rate than another with weather variations. The cloth along the edges is frayed and becoming undone. Pages are clean. One tissue guard with tearing. (Inventory #: 002132)