Laster und Leidenschaft

Creator

Date

[1967]

Identifier

Brasch Collection NE1155.5 M37 A69 1967

Type

Publisher

Hanau/Main: Verlag Karl Schustek

Abstract

A wordless book is almost a contradiction in terms. I first discovered one, an early example, in a Dunedin auction room. It was a red clothbound book titled ‘DESTINY/A novel in pictures/O. Nückel’. I flipped the pages and was excited by the sequence of over 200 pages of finely executed wood engravings – actually lead cuts – placed austerely just one image per opening with not a single word or caption. Dramatic and powerfully graphic, the story depicted was dark and pessimistic. This early wordless novel was dated 1930 though first published in Munich in 1926. I was hooked and bid until the book was mine. I wondered whether there were any examples of such wordless books in Special Collections? Yes, there were! In the Brasch Collection there was Frans Masereel’s Laster und Leidenschaft; others included Lynd Ward’s Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts (1929) and Wild Pilgrimage (1932). More examples are being added as opportunity arises.
(Chosen by Gary Blackman)

Files

Cab 12 maserell.jpg

Citation

Frans Masereel, “Laster und Leidenschaft,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed March 29, 2024, https://ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/9941.