Crossing Borders between London and Leipzig, between Image and Text: A Case Study of the Illustrirte Zeitung (1843)

Crossing Borders between London and Leipzig, between Image and Text:A Case Study of the Illustrirte Zeitung (1843) Andreas Beck (bio) Crossing borders between states and periodicals was a precondition for the emergence of xylographically illustrated German journals from the 1830s onwards—a precondition, amongst others, for L'Illustration, journal universel (1843–1944) and the Illustrirte Zeitung (1843–1944), the first (and for decades, the only) German counterpart of the Illustrated London News (1842–2003). In the 1830s, Germany had "scarcely any wood-cutters," and the few it had were unable to meet the increasing demand.1 Of necessity, editors thus had to procure xylographic illustrations from abroad,2 especially since German wood engravings were not known for their quality.3 Ten years later, the situation had improved noticeably. Around 1840, a number of English and French wood engravers went to Germany, where they, along with young German craftsmen, established xylographic studios.4 Yet this development only in part removed the former difficulties. Domestic production capacities were still limited, and consequently, the prices asked by wood engravers in Germany were high.5 In the case of larger undertakings, such as the Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen,6 edited by Johann Jakob Weber, the commissioning of wood engravers abroad still seemed unavoidable, at least until 1842.7 Even if from then on the production of books adorned with plenty of brilliant xylographic illustrations was possible without the assistance of foreign studios, the running of a German counterpart to the Illustrated London News was not. For example, the luxury edition of Musäus's Volksmährchen der Deutschen,8 serialized 1842–43, on average provided about twenty illustrations per month,9 a remarkable increase over the Geschichte Friedrichs (1840–42), where the audience had to be content with fewer than twelve monthly wood engravings.10 [End Page 408] But taking the new production rate as a measure, almost three years would have been necessary to publish the first volume of the Illustrirte Zeitung, whose weekly numbers, containing, it was claimed, "680 … Illustrationen" in all, were issued within only six months between July 1 and December 23, 1843.11 This could only be achieved with support from Britain and France. However, unlike in the case of his Geschichte Friedrichs, Johann Jakob Weber, the editor of the Illustrirte Zeitung, did not commission studios abroad to manufacture engraved wooden printing blocks.12 He decided on a significantly cheaper procedure. Stereotypes, that is to say, type-metal copies of wooden xylographic printing blocks,13 were purchased at a comparatively moderate price in London and Paris and shipped to Leipzig, where illustrations from the Illustrated London News and L'Illustration were reproduced by the Illustrirte Zeitung.14 The emergence of the illustrated news genre in Germany thus resembled that of Penny Magazine-type periodicals ten years earlier. The Pfennig-Magazin (1833–55), initially also conducted by J. J. Weber,15 offered, to a large extent, texts for which the illustrations had also been imported from abroad via stereotypes.16 In the Illustrirte Zeitung, at least in its early phase, we observe the same phenomenon. For example, the first issue of the new journal contains twenty-six illustrations (masthead and vignettes excluded), of which just five had been engraved in Germany; the others were printed from British or French stereotypes.17 This illustration practice did not result in insipid copies of foreign illustrated texts. On the contrary, Germans made a virtue of necessity. The materials from abroad were often skillfully recombined in a way that echoed the early modern artistic technique of imitatio or aemulatio. The inevitable rearrangement of imported pictures and their attendant texts offered the opportunity to develop new relationships between text and image. One mode of interaction, in particular, was promoted by this German copy-and-paste technique. In cases where foreign journals constructed analogies between the pictorial construction of illustrations and the layout structure of the page as a whole, the Illustrirte Zeitung used the opportunity to reinforce the iconic significance of the typeset text. In the following pages, this essay will trace this phenomenon in a number of examples. As my first example shows, the Illustrirte Zeitung ascribes iconic qualities to the typeset text...

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