[WASHINGTON, George.] Stuttgarter Bilderbogen. Georg Washington 1ter President der vereinigten Staaten von Nord America. George Washington the first President of the United States of America … No. 46.

The Life and Death of ‘Georg’ Washington

[WASHINGTON, George.] Stuttgarter Bilderbogen. Georg Washington 1ter President der vereinigten Staaten von Nord America. George Washington the first President of the United States of America … No. 46. Stuttgart. Fried[rich] G[ustav] Schulz. [Not after 1853.]

Lithographic broadside (420 x 320 mm), mounted on old card (442 x 352 mm); partly hand-coloured; minute rust-mark at foot, else very well preserved.

An extremely rare Stuttgart-printed broadside depicting scenes from the life of George Washington, with text in German and English, produced as part of a series of Bilderbogen on notable figures by the prolific publisher Friedrich Schulz, prominently featuring depictions of people of colour and highlighting his role as the only Founding Father to emancipate all of the enslaved people he owned in his will.

Schulz, a lithographer, stationer, and producer of cartes de visite who had exhibited at the Erste allgemeine deutsche Industrieausstellung (General German Industrial Exhibition) in Munich in 1854, published several of these Bilderbogen, or picture sheets, frequently brightly coloured and ‘showing multiple images on the same sheet of paper to portray a fairytale or historical event in narrative frames with a short text. Among the common topics and genres are religious, military battle, and sentimental scenes; portraits and caricatures; and landscapes and city views’ (Library of Congress, online).

Schulz seems to have specialised both in bilingual material and in Bilderbogen depicting notable figures. Nos. 1 to 48 had already been issued by 1853, available coloured or uncoloured, bound or sold as individual sheets; his 1853 advertisements describe sheets in German and facing Dutch, English, and French depicting the lives and deeds of, inter alia, Charlemagne, Christ, Cromwell, Peter the Great, Columbus, Wellington, Luther, Catherine of Russia, Queen Elizabeth I, and Muhammad, also mentioning the George Washington picture sheet.

His earlier works include sheets on Sleeping Beauty, the lives of soldiers, and folk scenes, perhaps indicating a general shift in interest towards the lives of notable leaders. Here, Washington is depicted in three-quarter profile within a wreath, flanked by American flags. The scenes beside and below him depict his youth (’Washington, a Geometrician’); Washington taking Boston ‘by storm’; his inauguration (’Washington’s entry when President’); Washington discharging his army; and his death. At the foot is a brief bilingual biography of Washington, the English portion full of charming errors and Germanicisms: he was, ‘howewer, distinguisched’ by his probity and docility ‘in such a high degree that all his fellow sholars every contention they had committed to his judgment’; from 1755 he ‘principally got celebrated by his wars of independency’.

Of particular note is the final line: Washington died on the 14 of December 1799 after haven given his slaves their liberty’. Washington had ordered his one hundred and twenty-two slaves to be freed following the death of his wife, Martha, and his will guaranteed the immediate manumission of his enslaved valet, William Lee, as well as a thirty-dollar annuity. Washington was, however, unable to free the so-called dower slaves who had come to Mount Vernon from Martha’s first marriage. Washington’s will expresses his ‘desire that all the Slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom. To emancipate them during [?Washington’s] life, would, tho’ earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties on account of their intermixture by Marriages with the dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations’. Washington also left provisions in his will for the emancipated who were infirm, elderly, or under orphaned and under the age of twenty-five to be ‘comfortably cloathed & fed’ by Washington’s heirs and taught to read and write. The present broadside, incorporating depictions of enslaved people celebrating Washington’s inauguration, was issued c. twelve years before slavery would be abolished in the United States, and less than a decade before the outbreak of the American Civil War. The theme of slavery and of the Civil War appears to have become particularly popular, with 1860s depictions of the battles of Pea Ridge, Springfield, and Murfeesboro printed in Neuruppin, for example.

OCLC finds a single example, at the KB National Library of the Netherlands. Schulz subsequently produced a French/German rendition of the present broadside, under the title Le général George Washington (no. 70), also held at the KB National Library of the Netherlands only.

Not in KvK, Library Hub, or the Dietrich Hecht collection of Bilderbogen at the Library of Congress. On Schulz, see Beschreibender Katalog der Württembergischen Erzeugnisse in der allgemeinen Deutschen Industrie-Ausstellung zu München 408 (6740).

SKU: 2124942