Antique Dexterity Puzzle: “Black Prussian Soldier”
$ 139.92
Description
Antique Dexterity Puzzle: “Black Prussian Soldier”. Condition Glass intact with moderate surface scratches and a few tiny edge flecks; no cracks. Colours strong, with only slight even fading to the blue ground. Printing remains sharp and unfaded in the black silhouette. Antique Dexterity Puzzle: “Black Prussian Soldier” German, circa 1926–1932 Description A bold and now highly sensitive late-Weimar pocket dexterity puzzle depicting a black caricature of a smiling Prussian guardsman wearing a red tunic with yellow facings, large gold hoop earrings, and the iconic spiked Pickelhaube helmet with brass eagle plate. The figure is rendered in stark silhouette style against a bright sky-blue background. The game requires guiding the small balls into the two exaggerated white eyes and the wide open mouth. Markings Printed in black along the lower right rim: GERMANY (Mandatory export designation for goods shipped outside the Reich after 1923.) Materials Disc with multi-colour chromolithographic printing Three small steel balls Flat glass cover Nickel-plated brass rim with milled “pie-crust” edge Reverse covered in original plain black paperboard Dimensions Diameter: 54 mm (2⅛ inches) Thickness: approx. 8 mm Condition Glass intact with moderate surface scratches and a few tiny edge flecks; no cracks. Colours strong, with only slight even fading to the blue ground. Printing remains sharp and unfaded in the black silhouette. Rim shows typical plating wear and minor edge knocks from pocket use. Paperboard backing original with light scuffs. All three balls present and functional. Historical Context & Significance Produced in Nuremberg during the late 1920s, this puzzle belongs to the same controversial interwar series as the Charleston dancer and other “Blackamoor” target designs that freely employed minstrel-show stereotypes then still widespread in European popular culture. The combination of Blackface imagery with German military uniform reflects the era’s exoticised and racially charged fascination with both colonial troops and Prussian militarism. Large numbers were exported to Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States as inexpensive fairground prizes and novelty counter items. An important, if uncomfortable, historical artefact documenting 1920s–1930s European racial attitudes in European toys and ephemera; offered strictly for scholarly and historical interest.
