In 1933 Hans Bellmer built in Berlin an artificial girl with multiple anatomical possibilities, conceived under the erotic spell of his young cousin Ursula and inspired by Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, whose hero is driven mad by love for an automaton. A year later he published, at his own expense, Die Puppe, a small book of ten photographs documenting the stages of the doll's construction. The pictures are tipped in on yellow paper and accompanied by the feverish prose of Erinnerungen zum Thema Puppe (Memories of the Doll Theme), printed on pink paper with three line-block illustrations. The book created a stir among the Surrealists, who recognised its subversive nature, and Paul Éluard published eighteen photographs of the doll in the December 1934 issue of the journal Minotaure.