Les premiers psychopédagogues et la bande dessinée. L’expérience de Hanns Guck-in-Die-Luft aux États-Unis et en Allemagne

Abstract

This article aims to reassess the theoretical contribution of the group of psychopedagogues who, after Töpffer and his Essai de physiognomonie, would represent the second generation of theorists of graphic literature. The origins of this group can be traced back to a unique experiment which, between 1892 and 1910, invited boys and girls from all five continents to adapt into drawings the poem Hanns Guck-in-die-Luft, originally published in Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann’s book Struwwelpeter (1845). In this article, we focus on this first experiment, first proposed by the American Earl Barnes and—following Aby Warburg’s Hopi journey—pursued by Karl Lamprecht and Siegfried Levinstein in Germany.

Keywords

• graphic test
• Struwwelpeter
• statistical psychopedagogy
• biological recapitulation
• Vienna School of Art History
• grammatology