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Ildikó Sz. Kristóf
schoolbook, which was translated three times into Hungarian and was published
throughout the early nineteenth century in three different cities in the Kingdom of
Hungary. Originally it was entitled Naturgeschichte fiir Kinder (Natural History for
Children) and was published in 1778 by Georg Christian Raff, a professor of history
and geography in the grammar school in Géttingen (Lower Saxony).” This was not
Raff's only work of importance: he also published a huge, two-volume Geographie
fiir Kinder (Geography for Children) in 1776 in the same town.’ From the point of
view of visuality, however, Naturgeschichte fiir Kinder was, and still is, outstanding.
The ordinarily one-volume book aimed at elementary- and secondary-level educa¬
tion, contains fourteen to fifteen copperplates of page size, and the plates show a
great number of plants, animals, and human beings from the different parts of the
world. The visual as well as textual order and structure according to which the im¬
ages have been sorted out deserves special attention, since they reveal much about
the interpretive—scientific and representational—tradition of late Classicism/En¬
lightenment, as well as Romanticism in western Europe, that has found its way to
eastern Europe as well.
Distribution and popularity
‘The second concept that I propose concerns the extent and importance of distribu¬
tion. How widely has the studied manifestation of “visual encounter” been spread
by its medium; how popular could it have become?
In the case of Raff’s schoolbook, we find an exceptionally large and wide¬
spread distribution. As I have discussed elsewhere, the schoolbook had several
reeditions, translations, and adaptations inside as well as outside the German¬
speaking world. Apart from its German and Hungarian versions, it had English,
French, and Danish, and also Austrian, Slaveno-Serbian, and Russian adaptations;
and it has reached the North American continent (to my current knowledge,
the state of Ohio), too (Sz. Kristéf 2011: 311 and Cazden 1998: 57-77). It may
have had, however, many other editions, translations, and adaptations in eastern/
east-central Europe that I am not aware of yet (for example, Slovak, Czech, Pol¬
ish, and Croatian editions). The adaptations that I did come across—such as the
Austrian (Vienna 1785 and 1791), Slavonic-Serbian (Buda 1809), and Russian
(St Petersburg 1785 and 1796)—have not been studied in the light of the oth¬
ers yet, though highly exciting textual/cultural comparisons could be made even
among the already found different versions (Sz. Kristöf 2011: 328-329, note 39).
I would suggest that a large-scale international archival-philological work should
2° For the different editions of the schoolbook see Sz. Kristöf 2011.
3 Raff (1748-1788) worked as a private lecturer and deputy headmaster (Konrektor) at the gymnasium
(Lyceum) in Göttingen. For details of his life and work, see Kunze 1976: 131-135; Doderer 1979:
119-120; and Te Heesen 2002: 47, 75, and 78-79.