German book illustrations, art for art's sake

Christina Schott, Contributor, Jakarta

There is a difference between book illustrations that just supplement a text, and those that complete a text. The illustrations of Berliner Handpresse (Berlin Handpress) belong definitely to the second category: They are real works of art that tell their own stories.

An exhibition that opened on Sunday night in the Goethe-Haus at Jl. Sam Ratulangi 9-15, Menteng, Central Jakarta, and will run until June 12, gives visitors a close look at these German gems of book art: from vivid and mind-boggling figures over cryptic designs to the colorful animals of children's books.

The Berliner Handpresse was founded in West Berlin in 1961 by Wolfgang Joerg and Erich Schoenig, two art students from southern Germany who shared a passion for painting and a love for the traditional art of bookmaking. Armed only with creativity, they started an artistic alliance for printing new and old texts illustrated with original graphics.

Their original plan of using woodcuts failed because of a lack of money. So they switched to the cheaper technique of linoleum print. Linoleum is a synthetic material, much smoother than wood, which was once described as a way "against the overly refined art, but favoring the unaffected, the genuine" by Walther Koschatzky, former director of the famous Vienna graphic arts collection Albertina.

With the perspective of looking back at the work of more than 40 years, the early poverty of the Handpresse that prevented the use of woodcuts can be seen as a stroke of luck. There are few other examples of such perfect and creative use of linoleum prints.

From the beginning the illustrations of the Berliner Handpresse were characterized by the interaction of the very different styles of the artists: While Erich Schoenig sketched rather cool and abstract pictures, Wolfgang Joerg created more energetic and crude, almost indecent prints.

In 1965, Wolfgang Joerg's wife, Ingrid, who grew up in East German city of Brandenburg, joined the company. With her entrance the era of mainly black-and-white prints ended, as she started publishing children's books with intensively colored pictures.

Nevertheless, Ingrid never gave into the temptation to create for her young public a pleasant and picturesque world. She never created an unrealistic fairy-tale land, but always maintained a a kind of menacing touch in her illustrations -- though they are, with all their details, always a joy for the observer.

These opposing -- and therefore very productive -- accents among the Handpresse members continued even after Schoenig's death in 1989, which marked the beginning of a new era for the small arts studio: Since then a number of well-known German illustrators, such as Klaus Ensikat and Manfred Bofinger, have worked as guest artists at Berliner Handpresse.

Due to the quality of their work, not only the illustrations but also the texts, this tiny Berlin publishing house soon became a meeting point for authors from West and East Germany. And in a departure from how things are usually done, it is not the writer who chooses the illustrator, but the illustrator who chooses the writer.

"It is an honor to be accepted in their program," says German writer Felicitas Hoppe, who has worked with the Joergs since 1996 and is at the moment traveling together with them through Java.

In its first years the Berliner Handpresse looked mainly for Baroque texts, and was well supported by the West Berlin Academy of Arts, which opened its archive to the illustrators. Later on in the '70s and '80s, modern literature became more prominent in their program. By editing previously unpublished texts by Oedin von Horvath, Ferdinand Bruckner and Kurt Schwitters -- all of them banned during the Third Reich -- the Handpresse suddenly gained a lot of attention outside of Berlin.

Even if these books were banned in the former German Democratic Republic, East German writers knew how to find their way to this unique publishing house, which was offered texts by such well-known authors as Ernst Jandl, Sarah Kirsch and Stefan Heym.

Due to this, the Berliner Handpresse soon fell under the suspicion of the East German State Security Policy, who watched the Handpresse until the fall of the Berlin Wall. But neither the Joergs nor Erich Schoenig chose authors with a view to politics. Rather they chose, and continue to choose, authors whose texts fit their program and ideas.

Despite the financial and logistical problems, the Joergs continue with their own special way of publishing. They cannot even imagine drawing for advertisements or doing commercial designs. And to the disappointment of many fans they have never increased the number of copies they print, so each book they publish has a limited issue of 300; or 100 for children's books.

"We don't want to change anything," says Ingrid Joerg, whose daughter was born on the same day the Berliner Handpresse was founded. "This means our entire life." Berliner Handpresse and Hoppe will give a workshop for artists of Taring Padi at ISI Yogyakarta from June 10 to June 14.

Hoppe will hold a public discussion on Thursday, June 6, with Indonesian writer Ayu Utami about the creative process at Goethe- Haus at 8 p.m.