Russian Illustration in German Children’s Books of the 1980s-1990s

Abstract

Through a series of interviews with artists and publisher, the article examines the cooperation between the South-West German children’s book publisher Esslinger Verlag J. F. Schreiber and Russian book illustrators in the 1980s and 1990s. After the decline of state publishers in the post-Soviet period, the tradition of Soviet classic children’s book illustration did not just cease to exist. Instead, it transgressed borders and developed in Germany during the reunification years that were characterized by a euphoric receptivity to Soviet and Russian art and culture. The exceptional conditions of unlimited artistic freedom, excellent printing quality, and relative absence (or deliberate ignorance) of time and economic pressure, made the Esslinger Verlag J. F. Schreiber a catalyzer for Russian artistic talent. The German contacts and contracts provided for a wider internalization and translation of the artists’ works into several other languages on the world market.

Keywords: Russian book illustration, German children’s book publishing, Late Soviet and post-Soviet book art, J. F. Schreiber Verlag, history of Moscow International Book Fair 1970s, Gerhard Schreiber,
Anastasiia Arkhipova, Andrei Dugin, Ol’ga Dugina, Gennadii Spirin, Nikolai Ustinov