Baron Münchhausen’s Hare ?
Ridinger, Johann Elias (Ulm 1698 – Augsburg 1767). Anno 1741. this Hare with 8 Legs and 2 hind Quarters has been shot in its burrow on the so-called Stickelsberg near Meisselhausen. Standing on a grotto before rich foliage. Etching with engraving. Inscribed: 60. / Joh. El. Ridinger del. sculps. et excud. Aug. Vind. 1753., otherwise in German as above. 33.8 x 25.5 cm.
Thienemann + Schwarz 302; Ridinger Catalog Darmstadt, 1999, VI.19 with ills. – Sheet 60 of the “Representation of the Most Wondrous Stags and Other Animals”. – The subject itself arched above. – Margins above & below 7.5-8.5, laterally 4.4-4.9 cm wide. – Münchhausen’s tale:
“ Since I hunted a hare for two whole days … Finally though the hare came that near to me … He fell down, and what do you think what I found now? – Four legs my hare had below the body and four on the back. When the two lower pairs were tired then he turned … around, and now it went on with the new ones with enhanced speed. Never again I have found a hare of this kind … ”
(Gottfried August Bürger – ancestor on the mother’s side here – , [Marvelous Travels … and Comical Adventures of the Baron of Münchhausen], Leipsic, Dietrich, 1954, p. 27). – On the possibility of a relation to the German Münchhausen tale Mr. Heppell from the Dpt. of Natural History of the Royal Scottish Museum pointed out on occasion of an earlier visit.
First Münchhausen tales (Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von M. in Bodenwerder, Weser, 1720-1797) were published in part 8 of the “Vade Mecum”, Berlin 1781, and, translated into the English and enlarged by own contributions by the former German professor Rudolf Erich Raspe living in England since 1775, as first independent edition at Oxford, presumably 1785. A second enlarged one along with two further editions followed in 1786, with the 5th to 7th following between 1787 & 1793. The first German one, translated from the English by Bürger and significantly enlarged, was published with the faked imprint “London 1786” that year by Dietrich at Göttingen. And this version made the tales a popular book. “(I)t is the one created last” (Curt Noch).
The report on the eight-legged hare by the baron himself .
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