Wealth or Inflation? Visual Media for Children

The energetic strokes with offset oval areas in pastel shades typical of the fifties represent a new departure, freedom and lightness after the blood-and-soil realism of Nazi-era wood-cuts. The post-1945 book market was dominated by picture books strongly influenced by the nineteenth-century tradition of illustration, however.

The contents, too, fulfilled traditional picture-book clichés, with characters withdrawing from their recent traumatic past and going back to the roots of the German forest, to cheerfully scampering imps and cute little animals, or to a simple but clean kitchen where mother – always wearing an apron – was serving up dumplings. Books such as Ernst Kutzer's travelling Easter bunny, drawn in 1917 or Fritz Koch-Gotha's Rabbit School continued to be prototypes. The graphic style of these books was based on solid craftsmanship und atmospheric intensity. The specifically German character of these picture books still marked them out from foreign productions – an idiosyncrasy which later disappeared as book production became increasingly international.

Photo Gallery Visual Media for Children

The sixties

"Anything abstract is modern" gradually became the overriding principle of West German picture books, too, and children were given brightly-coloured, expansive, abstract images with sharp, black contours. The shapes became more compact and simpler at the same time; "suitable for children" now meant simplified. At the same time, folklore and "naive" painting were discovered in the late sixties, and the magic word was "decorative". No children's bedroom was complete without bright and cheerful wallpaper, bedding, pullovers and exercise books. Gone were the days of pastel shades and delicate watercolours!

The seventies

The determining factors of youth culture were cheerful, bright colours, such as pink, red, orange, pop and psychedelic, which continued to represent an unbroken faith in progress, and the rediscovery of art nouveau. 1968 was the year of the youth revolts, which confronted traditional notions with completely new ideas for raising children. Three artists in particular, who remain significant to this day, are representative of this new departure: Tomi Ungerer, from Alsace, whose caricaturising strokes presented children as cheeky and rebellious figures, F. K. Waechter, whose brilliant books in the style of Wilhelm Busch contained photographic collages completed by children and smeared with greasy spots, and the Swiss artist Jörg Müller, whose mercilessly perfectly-drawn documentation of cities and landscapes destroyed by misguided development and ignorance hit the idealised world of picture books like a bombshell.

At the same time, nearly all children attentively watched educational programmes such as the Sendung mit der Maus (i.e. The Programme with the Mouse) and Das Feuerrote Spielmobil (i.e. The Fire-Red Playmobile), Germany's answer to America's Sesame Street, which aimed to give all children access to aesthetically high-quality contents and basic knowledge.

The eighties and nineties

In the eighties and nineties, the bastion of harmlessness was stormed by children themselves, who increasingly selected their own medium. It is now rare for printed paper to be the visual medium; children are continually surrounded by screens of all kinds. The graphics of computer games are continually improving, and graffiti has set out on a victory parade in Germany too, The kids love comic series from Japan – mangas – featuring beautiful young heroines battling against monsters in brilliantly drawn, dynamic, stereotypical visual models, taken from an indiscriminate blend of mythologies. Picture books, on the other hand, are leaving the classroom. Illustrators and publishers are trying to provide a counterpoint to the mass media using artistically complex forms. Professional graphic artists such as Rotraut Susanne Berner, Wolf Erlbruch and Nikolaus Heidelbach (to name just a few) provide dry and biting illustrations. Their artistically complex forms provide a counterpoint to the mass media. Collage, a technique popular in the twenties, is being rediscovered. Illustrators in the new Federal Länder are drawing on an artistically impressive tradition, following on from artists such as Walter Trier or the graphic artists of the early twentieth century. The contents and visual language display an impressive artistic range, including very free, artistic pictures.

The general trend towards more media cross-over has definitely had a positive effect on picture books. Greater attention should be given to this important medium by nursery schools, schools and museums, but also by families. It is children's first encounter with art.