This card may be based on a cartoon dog called Bonzo, but, just like Charlie Brown`s pet pal Snoopy, he displays many human characteristics. Though here Bonzo is seen actually driving a car, whereas all Snoopy`s flights of fancy were, sadly, contained within his head.
Lets start this with the card, for though the first thing you see on it is "Juwel" that is but a brand. And if you look up "Juwel" in our original World Tobacco Issues Index you are told to see under Greiling. Once there, this set is part of a group described in as :
- LUSTIGE BILDER (Comic Pictures). Nd. ... G74-21.1
1. Series of 186. Sm. 55 x 38. (96). Lg. 74 x 51 (90). See X24/29.C
2. Series of 234. Lg. 82 x 52. Verses by Rudolf Presber.
The same link appears in our updated World Tobacco Issues Index, but there has been a bit of an addition to the text, which now reads :
- LUSTIGE BILDER (Comic Pictures). Nd. ... G800-375
1. Series of 186. Sm. 55 x 38. (96). Lg. 74 x 51 (90)
2. Series of 234. Lg. 82 x 52. Verses by Rudolf Presber. "Juwel" brand on back.
Now there seems to be more than one "Juwel" brand. Ours seems to have been from an unknown company absorbed by Greiling. Then there was reportedly another, in East Germany, made by VEB Zigarettenfabriken - but of course Dresden was in East Germany once the country was split. There is also a report that these were shorter and sold in simply cardboard boxes, but that would almost certainly reflect the fact that in those post war times there were few materials with which to make either the box or the cigarettes.
In the 1970s another "Juwel" comes along, from Eastern Europe. This was cheaper and imported to Germany, and it appears that it replaced the one made in East Germany. It did not last long, and then the brand appears again, in Germany, being made by Philip Morris.
As for Rudolf Presber, he was actually Hermann Otto Rudolf Presber, and he was born in 1868 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He was a writer, of all things, poetry, philosophy, plays, a true lover of words, and of education. But then he was also the son of a writer, and teacher, called Hermann Presber. Just before the turn of the twentieth century he moved to Berlin, enticed by a job, at the paper "Die Post" but also newly separated from his wife, who moved to America shortly after. He married twice more, but very little is known of these ladies. The job at "Die Post" was prestigious and he had already been involved with several papers, as a reporter and a theatre critic - but then, suddenly, in 1905 he moved to "Lustige Blatter", a satirical paper which has not dated well. It closed down in 1944, but he only worked there until he died in 1935, during surgery.