Die Welt in Bildern: Erfahrungen und Evidenz in Friedrich J. Bertuchs Bilderbuch für Kinder by Silvy Chakkalakal

Abstract

Silvy Chakkalakal. Welt in Bildern: Erfahrungen und Evidenz in Friedrich J. Bertuchs Bilderbuch fur Kinder. Gottingen: Wallstein, 2014. 454 pp., 71 illus.Silvy Chakkalakal's well-researched analysis of the pictorial as an epistemological category represents the height of interdisciplinary inquiry into the field of European ethnology. Based on her dissertation, Welt in examines Friedrich Justin Bertuch's Bilderbuch fur in the considerably larger framework of visual culture in the long eighteenth century. Published from 1790 to 1830, the Bilderbuch fur not only popularized and disseminated scientific knowledge but also helped define childhood as a temporal, experiential, and cultural category. Bertuch, perhaps better known for the production and reception of the Journal des Luxus und der Moden (1786-1827), produced the Bilderbuch as an encyclopedic periodical that concentrated on natural history, geography, and ethnology. Chakkalakal's concern is primarily with the copperplate reproductions of nature and their ability to structure the transfer of knowledge to a German-speaking and youthful audience, though these images appeal to adults as well. However, this analysis resists any reductive notion of childhood and the view that the Bilderbuch was merely a visually entertaining pedagogical project. Departing from Heinrich Steffens's (1773-1845) assertion that Kinder amusieren sich mit Bildern (7), Chakkalakal scrutinizes the presumptive nexus between the child and the image; her study reveals the importance of unpacking this idea and its implications for any understanding of early modern epistemology. The centrality of sense perception for cognitive and cultural development comes to the foreground in this sustained interpretation of a homology between scientific knowledge and visual cultures.The study is divided into three sections, with a compelling introduction and useful summary. Section 1, Die Entdeckung der Kindheit und die Entdeckung der Sinne, lays the foundation for an anthropological understanding of experience and childhood. This work overall constitutes a unique contribution to the history of science; further, Chakkalakal integrates other regimes of knowledge seamlessly into the analysis. The author invokes Koselleck's theory of Verzeitlichung and the processes of temporalization to feature the importance of childhood in contemporary thought; she ventures the following: Ich mochte sogar so weit gehen und behaupten, dass Modelle von Verzeitlichung durch das Modell 'Kindheit' erst anschaulich wurden (104). The parallels drawn between the physical and the cognitive maturation of the child correspond to dominant ideas about development in the natural world. In this section, Comenius's Orbis pictus (1653) figures prominently, establishing an emblematics of images for the Middle Ages. Goethe warrants mention in a note about his own memory of the Orbis pictus (122n52). The mnemonic function of images connects to pedagogical and philanthropic theories and theorists. The final chapter in this section, Der Kind-Bild-Komplex, summarizes the arguments thus far: Die epistemische Qualitat des Bildes ist sehr hoch, wenn es innerhalb eines verzeitlichten Wissenserwerbs eingesetzt wird (186). Bertuch and his project appear infrequently in this prefatory reading, but Chakkalakal lays the necessary scholarly foundation to understand his role in the creation of knowledge about the natural world through the anthropologization of images.Section 2, Lebendige Bilder als kunstvolle Wissenschaft, anchors Bertuch in the enterprise of natural history in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Redirecting Barbara Stafford's argument about the decline of the visual in the Enlightenment, Chakkalakal claims: Visuelle Erziehung ist nicht im Niedergang begriffen, sondern wir haben es mit einer veranderten Kauferschicht von enzyklopadischen Bildprogrammen zu tun (191); she situates Bertuch's Bilderbuch fur in the context of multiple and coinciding visual conventions. …