Breath picture

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A breath image is rolled up by warmth.

As a touch screen , also Hauchbildchen , touch ticket , isinglass image , Klosterbildchen or Flanders Bildchen small, very thin, colored images are referred to curl up on the hand by the body heat and the breathing on. Since mid-17th century known they were originally with a binder from the swim bladder of Hausen made and show religious as well as secular subjects. They were first used as devotional objects , later also as motivational incentives for school children.

term

Hauchbild, Germany, late 19th century

The term breath picture originally referred to the very thin product; the diminutive of Hauchbildchen made a reference to the children. The term isinglass picture can also be found. The word breath image alludes to the fact that the foils bend and even roll up when lightly breathed on . The later celluloid pictures, which were much more rigid and easily broke, were also called breath pictures “for the sake of simplicity”.

production method

Since the middle of the 17th century, wafer-thin, transparent film was made from the dried swim bladder of the European house . They owe their film strength a binder consisting of collagen existing isinglass . To create the breath pictures, the isinglass was first boiled to a glue-like solution , then colored and applied or poured onto copper plates with a brush . The image on the foil was created by engraving .

A manufacturing instruction from 1715 mentions the first step to be cut from three lots of white isinglass. She was soaked overnight in a measure of well water that had two or three spoons of alcohol in it for transparency . This solution, cooked on a low flame, was then strained through a cloth . In order to give the breath pictures their mostly red or green, but also yellow or blue color, natural substances such as litmus , plant green or saffron were used, which had previously been soaked in fresh water and filtered through blotting paper . The copper plate, in which the desired motif was engraved, was rubbed with tree oil and covered with shell gold or shell silver, the colored, cooled liquid had to be applied thinly with a brush several times. The dried puff was then easily removed.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Johann Heinrich Moritz von Poppe described the production in a similar way:

  • Smash isinglass with a hammer and clean first in cold, then in warm water.
  • Simmer gently in a fresh saucepan for half an hour, until it turns into a paste that is so firm that it forms a drop when you put it on your fingernail.
  • Color the mixture with saffron or pernambuco .
  • Rub the mold with honey and grow on the edge or cover with cotton.
  • Pour a thin layer of glue and let it dry in the sun, after which the picture will detach itself from the form.

It can be assumed that the swim bladders of other fish species from the sturgeon and catfish family soon served as a substitute for the isinglass, which was also used by winemakers, silk weavers and medical professionals, among others .

Later, manufacturers sometimes left out the shell gold and shell silver and also printed in white, which, when held against the light, appeared black.

From the middle of the 19th century, gelatine was mostly used instead of isinglass . The paper pictures glued to the foil were then no longer so mobile; a “tasteless gold ground” “that stood out badly from the ground” completed the changes. As a result, the breath image became more and more from a saint to a bookmark and a joke , for example in the form of a wriggling fish.

Manufacturer

There were isinglass pourers in Augsburg as early as the 1640s. Initially, there were violent disputes with the manufacturers of the painted saints that had been customary up to that time, who charged them with damage to their business. The Capuchins had a priest in their ranks who guarded the pouring recipe, but women of high social standing also understood the new technology. Since mostly neither the publisher's name nor location details were applied to breath images, it is difficult to determine the origin of individual images. Christa Pieske lists a number of manufacturing companies that are largely closed today:

use

Breath pictures were first used as devotional objects , then also for decoration needs .

Breath image in the form of a cross with biblical quote "It is finished."

Towards the end of the 18th century, depictions of saints and their names can be found on the breath pictures , and quotations from the Gospel were also printed on them. People also called them monastery pictures or Flanders pictures . In a lexicon from 1781 it is mentioned that these were "writhing from the breath (s)" and "especially given to small children as a reward". The children mostly received religious images from the pastor or catechist .

Probably a few years before 1900, the Spandau company Carl Jürgens offered them in a specialist journal of the stationery trade under the name Hauchblättchen in packages of thousands, depending on the content at a price of five or nine marks . There was also waste of chromo images in packages of half a kilo and a whole kilo each.

Diligence

Breath pictures found their way into schools as industrious pictures . Ludwig Ganghofer , for example, remembers a “red puff picture that writhed on the warm palm”, and Hans Carossa describes what could be seen when a puff was held up to the light: “The dawning mountains were eerie - Doused in dark wine red, as if Judgment Day was coming. ”They were in use well into the 20th century.

Breath pictures were also given away as a token of friendship , and not only those with secular motifs such as flowers, tendrils or baskets, which were also available in heart shape. The breath pictures quickly became an industrially produced mass product.

Motifs

An order form from the manufacturer Carl Jürgens, probably printed shortly before 1900, lists the following motifs in a list that ends with etc.

Breath image in cross shape
  • Diligence card
  • Secular
  • Bible sayings
  • Icons
  • Images without text
  • Christian seals
  • Biblical picture puzzles
  • Proverbs in the cross
  • Cartoons

and assures the buyers that these "lovely additions" would, as a "bait for schoolchildren", bind the school children permanently to their business. In addition, there were joke pictures for adults that combined two-line punctuation marks with one picture. For example, the picture showed the fall of a young cyclist, and the verse was “Whoever does things like that / Is often laughed at.” Puzzles that encouraged the search for hidden figures and families were used to pass the time can also be found on breath pictures.

distribution

Initially, gaudy pictures were sold by peddlers , but also in grocery stores and later in markets . Around Augsburg , the Hauchbilder met with great demand, especially among the clergy in the 17th century , as they were able to use them to disseminate religious content. About 200 years ago, mendicant monks who collected alms are said to have distributed them to children.

In France, gelatine foils were still to be found in monastery schools until before the First World War , where they were also sold and, among other things, covered with “flowers made from mother-of-pearl”.

literature

  • Hans Gärtner: The good child. Diligent picture. An almost forgotten piece of school culture. , Poppe Verlag Windberg , 2014, ISBN 978-3-932931-84-0 .
  • Sebastian Trautner: New and well-approved home and art exercise, from which not only great and distinguished artists, as painters, sculptors, engravers, ... but also other people who are keenly reflective in their professions and art-loving minds raise a good science and can attain. Nuremberg, 1715.

Web links

Commons : Hauchbild  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Hans Gärtner: The brave child ... , p. 86.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Adolf Spamer: The small devotional picture. , Munich 1930, p. 124f. Quoted from Hans Gärtner: The brave child ... , p. 91.
  3. ↑ a b Hans Gärtner: The brave child ... , p. 96.
  4. ↑ a b Sebastian Trautner: New and well-approved house and art exercise ..., p. 233/234.
  5. ↑ Sebastian Trautner: New and well-approved house and art exercise ..., pp. 237-239.
  6. ↑ Johann Heinrich Moritz von Poppe: Technological Lexicon or: precise description of all mechanical arts, crafts, manufactories and factories of the necessary handles, means, tools and machines: with constant consideration of the needs of the latest times, the most important inventions and discoveries, of the most tested chemical and mechanical principles to be applied and of a complete literature of all branches of technology, including an explanation of all made up words: in alphabetical order. , H - N, Volume 3, Stuttgart Cotta, 1819, pp. 65–66, keyword holy images , accessed on April 4, 2015.
  7. ↑ Hans Gärtner: The good child ... , p. 88.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Hans Gärtner: The brave child ... , p. 87.
  9. ↑ Christa Pieske: ABC of luxury paper. Berlin 1983, p. 146 ff. Quoted from Hans Gärtner: Dem braven Kind ... , p. 94.
  10. ↑ Juergens, Carl . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1888, 1 (business books factory, stationery and stationery shop; special. Office and commander utensils, magazine for draftsmen and architects, book and lithographic printing; bookbinding and leather goods factory; stamp distribution (founded 1844); owner: Paul Jürgens) .
  11. ↑ a b c d Hans Gärtner: The brave child ... , p. 90.
  12. ^ Adolf Spamer: The small devotional picture. Munich, 1930, note 92, p. 123. Quoted from Hans Gärtner: Dem braven Kind ... , p. 90.
  13. ↑ a b c Hans Gärtner: The brave child ... , p. 94.
  14. ↑ Ludwig Ganghofer: Curriculum Vitae of an Optimist. , Stuttgart 1925, p. 151. Quoted from Hans Gärtner: Dem braven Kind ... , p. 89.
  15. ↑ Hans Carossa: The fates of doctor citizen. In Hans Carossa: Complete Works. , Volume I, Frankfurt am Main 1962, p. 155. Quoted from Hans Gärtner: Dem braven Kind ... , p. 89.
  16. ↑ Marion Widmann: Without diligence, no price. Price books, industrious pictures and paws. , in: Münchner Stadtmuseum: father, mother, child. Pictures and testimonials from two centuries. Catalog for the exhibition. , Munich 1987, pp. 314-319, ISBN 3-7991-6381-6 , p. 318.
  17. ↑ a b Hans Gärtner: The brave child ... , p. 95.