Das Narrenrad: Album frohlicher Radfahrbilder

By Lyonel Feininger, Ernst Heilemann, Knut Hansen, Edm. Fürst, Wilh. Schulz, Edmund Edel, and Carl Schnebel189821 chapters45 imagesGerman

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Contents

• Geliebte Radelschwestern und -Brüder! (opens in a new tab)

  Opening dedicatory poem addressed to fellow cyclists, arguing that every true fool belongs on a bicycle, that every fool needs a lady-fool companion found on a spring ride, and inviting the reader onto a waiting tandem.
• Hundertneunzig Kilometer (opens in a new tab)

  Short comic poem about a rider covering 190 kilometres home in 20-degree heat, wrecking his bicycle on a bad stretch of road and being left sprawled like a toad, wishing he were a faster racer but really preferring no bicycle at all.
• Meine erste Radeltour. (opens in a new tab)

  Comic prose story by Hans Hyan, 'a cosy tale,' about the narrator's drunken first long-distance bicycle ride home from a party: repeated crashes, a groundless terror of Gypsies camped in the woods, a collision with a dog, and waking up surrounded by curious onlookers.
• Heimkehr von der Arbeit. (opens in a new tab)

  Captioned cartoon depicting a worker's bicycle commute home.
• Philister. (opens in a new tab)

  Joke cartoon in which an old woman scolds her husband for staring too long at a passing young woman while their son looks on.
• Lehmann und Frau. (opens in a new tab)

  Captioned cartoon featuring a Mr. and Mrs. Lehmann on their bicycles.
• Bergab. (opens in a new tab)

  Joke cartoon of a downhill rider praying, 'Dear God, just let this go well one more time - we'll never do it again!'
• Strampelode (opens in a new tab)

  Comic ode by the poet Peter Hille celebrating 'Strampeln' (pedalling) as the height of fashion and manly enthusiasm, sweeping young and old alike into rapture.
• Radlers Herbstlied. (opens in a new tab)

  Parody autumn song, 'freely after' the poet Uhland, in which a cyclist puts the bicycle away for the season, oils its bearings against rust, and postpones all talk of riding until next May.
• Ein Blitzstrahl. (opens in a new tab)

  Melodramatic love poem and dialogue about a sultry summer morning, a flirtatious exchange between a couple debating whether to stay home for the summer instead of visiting relatives by bicycle, and a gathering thunderstorm interrupting a tender moment.
• Hochsommer. (opens in a new tab)

  Prose romance, signed 'Von Marie,' about a young American in Germany, Fred Ruller, and his awkward courtship of Fräulein Martha in her garden, resolving several pages later in a tearful reconciliation scene among the alders by a stream.
• Karlchen weiss, was sich schickt. (opens in a new tab)

  Joke cartoon holding up a boy, Karlchen, as a model of propriety for having his legs shaved.
• Radpatriotismus. (opens in a new tab)

  Joke cartoon of a Berlin spectator passionately urging on a racing cyclist against 'the English,' shouting 'Berlin vorne! Deutschland vor! Hurrah!'
• Der kopflose Radler. (opens in a new tab)

  Comic poem about a cyclist, unsettled by a friend's ghost stories and too much wine, imagining supernatural terrors along a lonely moonlit road home.
• Vereinigung der verbrüderten Speichentreter (opens in a new tab)

  Joke cartoon of a club of fraternal cyclists chanting their solidarity: 'We pedal firm and true together! All Heil Hurrah!'
• Tragödie, frei nach Heine (opens in a new tab)

  Parody poem 'freely after' Heinrich Heine, signed Reinhard Wolfram, in which a suitor begs his beloved to elope with him by bicycle after her father throws him bodily down the stairs.
• Der Radkavalier. (opens in a new tab)

  Joke about a cycling gentleman, mistaken for a knife-grinder and offended by the comparison, complaining that the sport has become too vulgar for true kavaliers.
• Des Versicherungs-Agenten Tischgespräche. (opens in a new tab)

  Comic Berlin-dialect monologue, 'recorded by Albert Brinitzer,' in which an insurance agent pitches bicycle insurance over dinner, citing the cautionary tale of the uninsured 'langer Schindler.'
• Rencontre. (opens in a new tab)

  Joke about a furious cyclist confronting another rider whose mismatched gear ratio ('136er Uebersetzung') wrecked his brand-new bicycle.
• Sportgrazien. (opens in a new tab)

  Mock epitaph poem, prefaced by a Goethe epigraph on beauty and grace, for a fictional champion cyclist, 'Peter Schnell,' born into the sport, who beat the juniors, set world records, and won prizes across the continent before his death.
• [Closing verse to the reader] (opens in a new tab)

  The album's unheaded closing envoi poem, in which the narrator - signing off as 'Der Radnarr,' the cycling fool - asks the reader whether the book's pictures and jokes pleased him, and urges him to recommend 'das Narrenrad' to friends eager for a laugh.