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This book belongs to a good friend of mine. She is 81 and possessed this book since she was 4 years old, from Munich. The book contains 18 stories and 5 color illustrations. It is written in Old German and hard to translate. There is no names on the illustrations nor a publisher reference that I can see. The last page numbered is 192.

Table of contents1 First printed page2 Illustration after page 563 Illustration after page 104 4 Last page5

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Davis8
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    You should ask this question in a forum for antiquarian book, likes this one. – mtwde Oct 27 '20 at 09:12
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    I’m voting to close this question because it's not about German language, but finding a specific book. – πάντα ῥεῖ Oct 27 '20 at 10:38
  • I am asking about the language also and not just which book it is. I cannot translate the story titles and that could be very helpful in my search. – Davis8 Oct 27 '20 at 12:32
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    @Davis8 Besides being in Gothic type, the language is quite common for 100 years ago. It is far too new qualify for anything special as Frühneuhochdeutsch spoken at the time of Luther. – guidot Oct 27 '20 at 12:42
  • The quoted Löhr seems to be Das Buch der Maehrchen für Kindheit und Jugend nebst etzlichen Schnaken und Schnurren, anmuthig und lehrhaftig / von Johann Andreas Christian Löhr, for which facsimile is available here. It was published 1819. – guidot Oct 27 '20 at 12:52
  • @Davis8 I have transcribed the titles in my answer. You should be able to find all of them with a Google search. –  Oct 27 '20 at 14:39
  • There are a few things that might help you in your search, although, like @Roland, I hold little hope of success. First, as Roland noted, the language is not Old German. The language is modern German. The typography on the other hand uses a typeface known as Fraktur .. a form of Blackletter Gothic (check Wikipedia) that was common in German publishing until it was largely replaced by a Roman typeface (see the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute on Wikipedia). Despite the replacement, most German speakers (including those who leant German as a 2nd language) can read Fraktur. – CrimsonDark Oct 28 '20 at 10:39
  • You might try searching Google Books for text fragments (using either the title transliterations provided by @Roland or by asking your friend to convert the Fraktur to Roman type for you so you know what to search for. Something else you might try is to use Google Image search of one of the other image search engines such as TinEye to see if there are any matches for the illustrations (colour or black-and-white) in the book. – CrimsonDark Oct 28 '20 at 10:42
  • I tried both these strategies without success, but on the other hand, I didn't try particularly hard! Google Books is at books.google.com and Tin Eye revers-image search is at tineye.com . Good luck. – CrimsonDark Oct 28 '20 at 10:43

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It's written in modern standard German. Nothing old about it, except the type setting and orthography. And if you know that ſ is written as s nowadays, even that's easy to read.

You should be able to find most of the fairy tales from the table of contents online, often even their English translation.

For example if you search for "Die sieben Schwäne" by (Brothers) Grimm, you will find the correct tale (with translation) even though the title in the book is not correct. The actual title of the Grimm tale is "Die sechs Schwäne". There is a variant by Ludwig Bechstein that is called "Die sieben Schwäne".

I don't think it is possible to identify the exact book but that shouldn't be necessary because these are all well known and popular fairy tales.

Here is a transscription of the TOC:

  1. Die sieben Schwäne. (Nach Grimm.)
  2. Vom Rübezahl. I. Rübezahl und sein Schuldner. (Nach Musäus.)
  3. Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot. (Nach Grimm.) Mit Illustration
  4. Abu Hassan. (Nach Löhr.)
  5. Hans im Glücke. (Nach Bechstein.)
  6. Der Schatzgräber. (Nach Musäus.)
  7. Die Nymphe des Brunnens. (Nach Musäus.) Mit Illustration
  8. Frau Holle. (Nach Grimm.)
  9. Geschwisterliebe. (Nach Löhr.)
  10. Falada oder die Gänsemagd. (Nach Grimm.) Mit Illustration
  11. Der gestiefelte Kater. (Nach Löhr.)
  12. Vom Ritter Blaubart. (Nach Bechstein.)
  13. Vom Rübezahl. II. Rübezahl und der Glaswarenhändler. (Nach Musäus.) Mit Illustration
  14. Alibaba und die 40 Räuber. (Nach Löhr.)
  15. Vom verwunschenen Schloß. (Nach Musäus.)
  16. König Drosselbart. (Nach Grimm.) Mit Illustration
  17. Der Zwerg Nase. (Nach Hauff.)
  18. Die Höhle von Steenfoll. (Nach Hauff.)
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    I don't think the question is about the fairy tales, but about the book itself. I'm sure OP knows where to find the tales, but he wants to help an old lady refreshing a childhood memory. Nevertheless, the typo you mentioned might be a hint. – mtwde Oct 27 '20 at 08:36
  • As I wrote, I'm skeptical that the exact book can be found (without considerable effort and the help of a librarian). There were just so many collections of fairy tales published. –  Oct 27 '20 at 08:39