Wealth or Inflation? Visual Media for Children

This dossier aims to record the major trends in the development of visual language for children. We look back on the development of visual language from after the end of the Nazi dictatorship until today, ask what makes a good picture book for children and call attention to the exhibition Zeitgenössische Bilderbuchillustration in Deutschland (i. e. contemporary illustration in picture books) touring through many Goethe-Institutes all over the world.

Hardly any other field of culture and aesthetics has undergone such radical changes as media for children and young people, from the visual language, based on nineteenth-century models, to the flood of images in the media, among which books now only play a subordinate role.

'Die Häschenschule' Copyright: Alfred Hahn's Beck Verlag KG Hamburg/Esslinger Verlag

From Imp to Action Hero

Pictures for Children from the Post-War Era to the Turn of the Millennium

With the demise of the Nazi dictatorship and its narrow-mindedness, it was hoped that a new attitude would spread throughout Germany: a longing for freedom and openness in thinking, society and art. In book design, too, especially children's books, new paint-strokes, colours and surfaces were to be found in books after 1945. At that time, however, it could not yet be foreseen how much the visual landscape was to change in the forty years ahead.More ...
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"For children only"

Picture books are traditionally an undervalued medium in Germany. However, in Germany and the Anglo-Saxon countries in particular, great draftsmen have always made books for children. From the outset, great care was taken in making picture books – not in spite of the fact that they were for children, but because of it.More ...