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Rare Pre-War 1930s Bad Homburg, Germany Travel and Historical Ephemera Lot (3 Booklets)
Featuring Intact Fold-Out Maps, Botanical Inventories, and 1930s Historical Transit Markers
Up for your consideration is a remarkable, premium-quality collection of three (3) original vintage travel guides and promotional booklets from the world-renowned imperial spa town of Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany. Dating to the pre-war 1930s era, this lot offers an exceptional primary-source look into Third Reich-era domestic tourism, luxury hospitality architecture, and historic landscape design.
All three booklets are remarkably well-preserved and contain their original, highly desirable fold-out maps and architectural plans intact.
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Item 1: Official Bad Homburg Fremdenführer 1936/1937 (Red Cover)
Comprehensive Contents: 120 pages total, completely intact. Published by the local Zeitungs-Verlag Bad Homburg G.m.b.H. (66. Jahrgang).
Third Reich Infrastructure Marker (Page 86): Features the daily postal bus schedule tables ("Tägliche Kraftpostverbindung zum Großen Feldberg i. Ts."). Column 1 explicitly lists the historical station stop "Adolf-Hitler-Allee" (historically and currently known as Tannenwaldallee), serving as an unedited primary source of 1930s political street renamings.
Historic Topographical Map: Includes the large, original "Taunus-Reliefkarte" fold-out relief map attached cleanly at the back. The map unfolds beautifully with one tear as seen in the photo.
Rich Period Commercial Ads: Features extensive commercial advertisements, including local cafes (Schloß-Café, Tennis-Café), a master tailor (Walter Halbach), and the historic Red Cross Sanatorium (Schwesternschaft v. Deutschen Roten Kreuz) on Kaiser-Friedrich-Promenade.
Item 2: Ritter’s Park-Hotel Luxury Promotional Booklet (Aqua Cover)
Elite Tourism Ephemera: A multi-page, high-end promotional booklet printed for the town's premier luxury resort (notable later in history as the hotel where Elvis Presley stayed during his military deployment to Germany in 1958).
Elegant Visuals: Striking aqua-blue cover adorned with magnificent gold-leaf embossed royal coats of arms.
Trilingual Architectural Plan: Features an intact, crisp fold-out layout of the hotel grounds labeled simultaneously in German, English, and French ("Hochparterre / Groundfloor / Rez-de-chaussée").
Historic Court Purveyor Ad: Features local advertisements, highlighted by a page for the famous local bakery Gustav Arrabin at 37 Elisabethenstrasse, proudly boasting his status as a "Hoflieferant" (Purveyor to several royal courts) and his medicinal "Homburger Diätgebäck" (stomach health pastries).
Item 3: "Der Kurpark von Bad Homburg" Landscape and Botanical Guide (Green/Gray Cover)
Garden Architecture Focus: A specialized 28-page historical guide issued directly by the local Kurverwaltung park management.
Lenné's Legacy (Page 7): Honors the master layout of Prussian garden artist Peter Joseph Lenné (1789–1866), explicitly detailing how his work in Bad Homburg sits alongside his iconic global masterpieces at Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam and the Tiergarten in Berlin.
Botanical Catalog (Pages 21-28): Contains an extensive 7-page "Ausführliche Pflanzenbestandsliste" (Plant Inventory List) classifying the park's historic flora and tropical plants (such as Eucalyptus, Datura, and Ricinus) by their Latin scientific and common German names.
Intact Site Guide Map: Features its original attached fold-out map ("Plan zum Führer durch den Kurpark von Bad Homburg"). The map outlines 29 distinct park landmarks, including the historic continental European tennis courts, golf links, and the local Russian Orthodox Chapel (Russische Kapelle).
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Condition Notes:
All three pieces are in excellent vintage/collectible condition for paper ephemera nearing a century old.
The spines and binding staples are original, tight, and completely secure.
The interior pages are crisp, clean, and entirely legible with natural, uniform age-toning.
CRITICAL DETAILS: Both internal fold-out maps and the architectural floor plan open cleanly and are entirely free from the major splits, detached seams, or heavy fold-wear common for this era.
Please review the high-resolution listing photos closely to evaluate the precise cosmetic condition of the covers and map folds.
Shipping and Handling:
We understand the fragility of historic paper items. This lot will be meticulously packaged flat between rigid sheets of thick cardboard to eliminate any risk of bending, folding, or corner blunting during shipment. Tracked shipping with full carrier insurance is included.
