Der Galaganer hon 

Peretz Markish, 1895–1952 (Author) 

Y. (Yosef) Ṭshayḳoṿ, 1888–1979 (Illustrator)

Der Galaganer hon (The Galagan Rooster)

Berlin: Klal farlag, 1922

Peretz Markish (1895–1952), a prominent Yiddish author, was born in Polonnoe, in Ukraine’s Volyn province. A leading member of the Kyiv group of Yiddish writers, like many other intellectuals and artists of his generation, he left the Soviet Union in 1921. He lived in Warsaw, Paris, Berlin, London, and Rome, visited Palestine, but came back in 1925, driven by the idealistic beliefs and enthusiasm of that time. During World War II, he was active in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. He was arrested in 1949 as part of the committee’s liquidation campaign. On August 12, 1952, he and 12 other prominent writers and intellectuals were executed during the “Night of the Murdered Poets.” 

Markish’s children’s poem about an arrogant rooster and his love of a beautiful peacock hen, is one of the finest books that Yosef Ṭshayḳoṿ illustrated, using a bold, Cubo-Futuristic style. Born in Kyiv, Ṭshayḳoṿ was among the ardent protagonists of the modernist trends in Jewish art in the 1920s and 30s. The first comprehensive Russian-Ukrainian dictionary (Rosiĭsʹko-ukraïnsʹkyĭ slovnyk)—a publication of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (Ukraïnsʹka akademịi︠a︡ nauk) in Kyiv in 1924–33—used the Ukrainian word galagan for gollandskii petukh, or rooster of the Dutch breed famous for its distinctive colorful appearance. Dutch roosters frequently served as show birds. Markish therefore invented the Yiddish expression “Galaganer hon” to underscore the eccentric, boisterous nature of his poem’s hero.