EARLY MODERN WEBCOMICS 2: DURER’S SPRECHEN DONNERESCHEN

Among the early innovations in print culture were the “Sprechen Donnereschen” templates. First carved by famed printmaker Albrecht Durer, the template depicted three “thunder lizards” in disputation. Reproductions of the template spread through Germany during the sixteenth century, and printers for the different side in the era’s political and religious conflicts would put different ideas in the mouths of the thunder lizards. Though the opinions the lizards mouthed varied, their role of each was generally the same: the large “Tyranneidechse” would make a statement, the smaller “Schnelleidechse” would refute it, and commentary — often of a humorous or sentimental nature — would be provided by the humble “Vogeleidesche.” Occasionally, printers would add characters to the original Durer woodcut — a small insect perched on Tyranneidechse’s nose, for example — but most of the polemicists stuck to the plain three-lizard format. Rumor has it a group of Konigsberg printers approached Immanuel Kant to produce a Sprechen Donnereschen print of some of his ideas, but Kant, a known stick-in-the-mud, refused, and the format became a historical curiosity of the Reformation era.

EARLY MODERN WEBCOMICS 2: DURER’S SPRECHEN DONNERESCHEN

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