Discover the First Horror & Fantasy Magazine, Der Orchideengarten, and Its Bizarre Artwork (1919-1921)

Since the 18th century, the genres of Gothic horror and fantasy have flourished, and with them sensual and visceral imagery has become commonplace in film, television, and comics. These genres probably reached their aesthetic peak in the 19th century with writers like Edgar Allan Poe and illustrators like Gustave Dore. But it was in the early 20th century that the more mass-market subgenre really came into its own. The term is “weird fiction.” HP Lovecraft used to describe the pulp brand of supernatural horror codified in the pages of American fantasy and horror magazines A strange story—First published in 1923. (And it’s still going strong!)

The forerunner of many creepy titles from EC Comics, strange story It is considered the definitive site for early 20th century strange fiction and illustration.

But you only have to go back a few years and look to another continent to find earlier publications useful to German-speaking fans.der orchidinggarten (“The Garden of Orchids”) was the first horror and fantasy magazine, published for 51 issues from January 1919 to November 1921.

The magazine was founded by editors Karl Hans Strobl and Alfons von Ziburka, as well as H.G. Wells, H.G. Karel Capekand from such forebears as Dickens, Pushkin, Guy de Maupassant, Poe, Voltaire, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. “There are two problems, der orchidinggarten “I was obsessed with detective novels,” he wrote. 50w“And down to the erotic stories about cuckolds, it was a real fantasy magazine.” And it was also a gallery of strange and unusual artwork.

50 Watt quotes Franz Rottensteiner’s description of the magazine’s art, which ranges from “medieval woodcut expressions to the works of macabre masters such as Gustave Dore and Tony Johannot, to contemporary German artists such as Rolf von Herschelmann, Otto Rennekogel, Karl Ritter, Heinrich Klee, and Alfred Kubin.” These artists created the covers and illustrations you can see here. More works can be viewed at: 50w, black sunJohn Coultart’s {feuilleton}.

“What strikes me about these black and white drawings, as well as the dense, frenetic pen-and-ink scenes above, is how different they are in tone from the pulp magazines that followed soon after in America and elsewhere. They are often much more adult and original than the inflated Gothic clichés,” comments Coulthard. strange story And for many years there remained few titles. ”It is true that the format may be similar to its successor, but der orchidinggarten‘s covers show a Surrealist influence, “some in an almost expressionist style”, and many of the illustrations show “clear Goya influence”.

Popular fantasy and horror illustrations often lean toward the soft porn of 70s airbrushed vans, pulp novel covers, or the gruesome kitsch of comic books. Rottensteiner wrote in 1978: fantasy book “This broadsheet…certainly ranks as one of the most beautiful fantasy magazines ever published.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment. View, read (German), download Original scans of the first few issues of the magazine can be found on this Princeton site.

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

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