Dating from the 15th century (facsimiles) to the 21st, these printed works build bridges between illustrated books, paper theatres, silhouettes, flip books, and scientific explanatory boards. The Hartung collection was assembled for over more than three decades and is now one of the most extensive collections of kinetic books in the German-speaking countries. The pop-up, folding, sliding, or cut-out techniques used in these newly acquired publications create endless illusions of space and movement.

While traditional books offer linear reading as they contain sequences of texts and sometimes images, kinetic books are a hybrid, versatile type of medium that defy straightforward classification. As representatives of an analogue multimediality based solely on paper, they are harbingers of digital media convergence. Like digital multimedia, they combine images, movement, text, and even sound.

A large part of the collection can be classified as children’s and juvenile literature, especially fairy tales, sagas, and pop culture. However, it also includes numerous works on popular science and some that are explicitly technical, such as “model atlases” of medicine or machinery.

The collection reflects the history of kinetic literature, ranging from facsimiles of 15th century volvelles (rotating elements) and 18th century paper theatres to the golden age of this genre in the late 19th century. The growing number of toy books for middle-class households at that time caused the genre to boom. Its most prominent pioneer was painter and children’s book author Lothar Meggendorfer, who from the 1870s on invented many of the consequently used techniques.

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Vojtěch Kubašta: Gloria in Excelsis Deo, 1960s

Pagination

: Lothar Meggendorfer: Internationaler Circus …