Magyar Kártya / William Tell Pattern / Doppeldeutsche (Piatnik)

Magyar kártya / William Tell pattern / doppeldeutsche. Piatnik, Hungary. Stripped regular deck, German suited, 33 double-headed cards. Size: 63mm x 100mm.

Deck make-up:
Hearts, acorns, bells, leaves: A, 7-10, under-jack, over-jack, king.
Extras: title card (double-sided).

The William Tell or double-German (doppeldeutsche) pattern is popular throughout the former Austro-Hungarian empire. The cards depict William Tell and other characters from Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell (the title character is on the over-jack of acorns). The play's first Hungarian performance was in 1833 and the first decks were made by József Schneider of Pest around 1835. The characters from the drama were chosen to avoid censorship at the time of the Hungarian opposition to Habsburg rule (the story, after all, was about a successful revolt against the Habsburgs).

The aces (which are, confusingly, here shown with four pips, and are also referred to as deuces) break from the Tell theme and show each of the four seasons. The kings are generic and not taken from the Tell saga.

The variant shown here is a current one from Hungary; the Austrian versions have carried a few differences.

Click on any card to explore the design.

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Card image size, below:     

Hearts

The season on the ace of hearts is spring (tavasz in Hungarian). In general within German-suited packs, the under-jack is told from the over-jack by the position of the pip symbol. If it's placed lower down with respect to the main picture, it's the under-jack; if placed higher up, it is the over-jack. There are no queens.

Acorns

The wonderfully evocative ace here represents winter (tél). William Tell himself makes an appearance on the over-jack.
The acorn suit would (via a very approximate rendition of the design) end up pictured as clovers / trefoils (trèfles) when the suit arrived in France. Once the suit got to Britain, the design remained the same but it inherited a mismatched name from the Mediterranean suit of clubs.

Bells

The ace is summer (nyár). Note that the 7 of bells in this pack is not 100% reversible (it features Piatnik's logo of a horse in lieu of an upside-down repeat of the crossbow).

Leaves

The ace is autumn (ösz).
This suit ended up as pikes (piques) in France, and then spades in Britain – both names being (mis-)applied from the Mediterranean suit of swords (swords are spade in Italian).

Extras

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