Frankfurter Konversationsblatt
All around the world, people’s capacity to talk to each other, share opinions, and debate ideas is increasingly vanishing. Opposing positions are often simply irreconcilable, and a person with a differing opinion is an enemy to be destroyed. During these difficult times, several issues of the Frankfurter Konversationsblatt (Frankfurt Conversationpaper) fell into my hands. The Frankfurter Konversationsblatt appeared from 1815 to 1866 as a literary supplement in the Frankfurter Postzeitung.
The Postzeitung is one of Germany’s oldest newspapers. It was founded in Frankfurt am Main in 1615 and appeared, with some interruptions, until 1866. I was able to use original pages from the Konversationsblatt issues printed in 1850/53/57 and 59
for my project. I combined this old material with conversations from ten literary texts:
Conversation between a doll (Ms. Minde) and a couch cushion (Ms. Marquardsen) from Emmy Ball-Hennings’ autobiographical story about her youth, Blume und Flamme (Flower and Flame)
Conversation between a reader and a critic in the proscenium fromElisabeth Langgässer’s novel
Das unauslöschliche Siegel (The Indelible Seal)
Franz Kafka’s Gespräch mit dem Betrunkenen (Conversation with the Drunk)
Phone conversation between the American president, Muffley, and the Soviet head of state, Dimitri, from Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dialogue between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza upon facing the windmills or (as Don Quixote believes) giants from
Miguel de Cervantes’ novel El ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha
(The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha)
Dialogue between Woyzeck and the doctor from Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck
Conversation between Pip and Joe from Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations
Argument between Settembrini and Naphta from Thomas Mann’s novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain)
Phone conversation between Quinn and Peter Stillman from Paul Auster’s novel City of Glass
Conversation between Tom Sawyer and Ben Rogers from Mark Twain’s novel
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The images are printed from polymer plates. All texts are set by hand, using the typefaces Akzidenz-Grotesk light and medium, Bodoni, Bodoni bold, and Bodoni italic, Clarendon regular and bold, Futura book and Futura bold, Futura Condensed light and bold, Garamond and Garamond italic, and Unger Fraktur.
Letterpress, thread-bound paper-over-board, in slipcase, 144 pages, 9.5 x 23.5 cm,
18 print-numbered and signed copies. Flörsheim 2025