Schlump by Hans Herbert Grimm first edition 1929

[GRIMM, Hans Herbert] 
Schlump. The Story of an Unknown Soldier. 
London: Martin Secker, 1929  
 
8vo., grey-green boards, embossed typographically with title in orange to upper board and spine; upper edge stained in matching orange; together in the wonderfully designed dustwrapper featuring a tessellating image of marching soldiers to both panels; unclipped (7s. 6d. net); pp. [x], 3-309, [iii]; a near-fine copy, with very light scratches to boards and compression to spine tips; upper edge a trifle dusty; slight offsetting and warping to endleaves but otherwise internally fresh; the near-fine jacket just a touch darkened along the backstrip and folds.  
 
First UK edition, originally published in Munich the previous year and translated from the German by Maurice Samuel. 
 
A scarce novel of the First World War, which first appeared in 1928 published by Kurt Wolff.  Often compared to Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (by which it was eclipsed), the work follows the author’s own experiences “as it really was, behind the lines and in the trenches, eating, sleeping, marching, love-making, fighting, suffering”, and follows the titular protagonist, his experiences a military police officer in German-occupied France, and his rise (or fall) from government administrator to soldier in the front line trenches. The book was subsequently burned by the Nazis in 1933 due to its satirical and anti-war tone. Concerned with retaining his anonymity, Grimm joined the Nazi party and worked as an interpreter during the Second World War. Upon his return home to Soviet-occupied Germany he was denied work as a teacher because of his involvement with the Nazis, and in 1950 he was called to a meeting in Weimar by government officials.  Although what was discussed was never revealed, two days later Grimm committed suicide. The author remained anonymous until as late as 2013, when a book entitled Book of Burned Books was published by  literary critic Volker Weidermann. Grimm’s daughter subsequently came forward and he was named as author, with a new English translation published in by the New York Review of Books that same year. 
 
A profound and humorous work, poking fun at the futility of war.