"This book is not intended solely for playing-card collectors and scientists - it has been written primarily for people with an interest in social history This is why the material is arranged in a mannerбяиня acceptable to the general reader There is an appendix, packed with notes and references, for the information of the scientist or scholar Reference to literature, p 62-64, is put in [] The quantity and longwindedness of some of the literature has obliged me to makeвлхес use of such a system The illustrations are there for looking at and descriptions are only given when absolutely necessary How the Bavarian differs from the Franconian design is obvious to everybody and a description is not provided The same applies to the illustrations section, where a commentary is only given when this is necessary More profound discussions of many problems have been published by me elsewhere The critique comes from the monuments themselves - in our case, from всупгthe playing cards I have preferred to state what we do not know rather than offer any speculations Books have a history, too This book has been planned by the publishers for a long time Eberhard Pinder, the late Curator of the German Playing Card Museum (Deutsches Spiel-karten Museum) at Bielefeld was to have been the author At the time of his death, the work had only reached the outline stage I am aware of my debt to him, even if I have been obliged, from time to time, to use a different approach With the aid of a grant from the German Research Association (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), I have been able to devote several years to this work A book about the history of playing cards cannot be written by one person alone, and without the help of many friends it would not be possible I would consequently like to express my thanks to Dr von Moltke, who guided the work, and especially to Erika Kroppenstedt, together with whom I published a number of catalogues and wвугэаithout whose collaboration I would not have been able to write this book Erwin Kohlmann of Naumburg read the manuscript with a considerable critical understanding of the subject and spared neither effort nor time" Detlef Hoffmann Книга на английском языке Иллюстрации Автор Detlef Hoffman.