Pfänder-Spiele

The title of this early 19th century game translates as the Forfeit Game. It comes in two parts: a set of 47 cards and a 32-page booklet. The booklet has rules for 20 different party-style games. These include Mufti-spiel (like Simon Says), Das Klingel-Spiel (Musical Chairs), Das blinde Ruh-spiel (Blind Man’s Buff), Die stummen Spieler oder Pantomime (Charades), and a set of terrific Teutonic tongue twisters. What these games have in common is that at least one player may or must fail, and that’s where the cards come in. The company selects one of their number to act as the warden and choose which card to inflict on each loser. Each card includes one to three challenges. Card 39, for instance, orders that the player either “have one or two persons of the opposite sex kiss your eyes” or “confess which Commandment you have sinned against most often” or “kiss the most beautiful person in the room”. Described on the box as entertaining and funny, the booklet takes pains to assure readers that the games and forfeits include “nothing insulting, much less offensive, but only for the humorous maintenance of youth”. The cards and booklet are printed in a pre-umlaut Fraktur script, and the cards appear to have been hand-cut, since they vary in width and length by as much as 1/8 inch, and by as much as 3/32 inch from top to bottom of a given card. The publisher was an art dealer as well as publisher based in Stuttgart in the early to mid-1800s.