The penniless author whose fictional character helped sell American tobacco

Around 1900, Little Joker tobacco launched an advertising campaign built on the outrageous adventures of Baron Munchausen, the fictional German braggart whose impossible exploits had captivated readers since 1785.

The character originated from Rudolf Erich Raspe's book, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which compiled and exaggerated stories told by a real retired German officer, Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen.

The real baron served with Russian forces against the Ottoman Empire and entertained guests at his countryside estate with embellished war stories. Raspe, meanwhile, had fled Germany in 1775 after being accused of stealing coins from a museum where he worked as a curator.

According to author Samuel Austin Allibone, writing in 1908, Raspe "remembered the stories he had heard at the hospitable table of Baron Münchhausen" and published them while "in this humble condition and a desperate man." The book became wildly popular across Europe, translated and expanded throughout the 19th century.

Raspe never claimed authorship, fearing legal consequences, and died penniless. But his creation lived on — eventually helping sell cigarettes to turn-of-the-century Americans through colorful trading cards featuring the baron's fantastical adventures.

Here's a poem from a sample card:

MUNCHAUSEN AND THE HANDSOME BEAR.
Munchausen finds one summer day
A strangely handsome bear
With splendid wealth of bear-skin coat
Of sleek and glossy hair.
To shoot the beast and spoil his fur
Would be a wasteful sin,
So the LITTLE JOKER lays a plan
To save this precious skin;
He covers well a wagon pole
With plenteous lot of honey,
Then sits upon the wagon box
And thinks it is so funny
To see the animal eat and eat
And swallow all the pole,
Until at his posterior end
It comes through sound and whole.
Munchausen then secures the beast;
He takes a great big nail
And drives it in the wagon pole
Beyond the creature's tail:
In such surprising pranks as these
It's plain that every smoker
Must see the wondrous cleverness
Of the cunning LITTLE JOKER.