Marie Neurath and Isotype Picturebooks: Transforming Knowledge for Children

Marie Neurath (1898-1986) was an illustrator and graphic designer who, from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s, created innovative non-fiction books for children. Together with her husband, politician and philosopher Otto Neurath (1882-1945), and artist and designer Gerd Arntz (1900-1988), she developed a method of visual representation in 1920s Vienna that became known as Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education). Influenced by the progressive ideas of the Vienna Circle, Isotype was intended to contribute to the democratization of knowledge. To this end, the Neuraths and their team created a special form of pictorial statistics that meant to make complex scientific relationships accessible to the layperson. In the postwar period, Marie Neurath developed several series of informative picturebooks for children that incorporated and further developed the Isotype principles. Although these picturebooks were hugely successful in their time, international picturebook research has barely acknowledged Marie Neurath’s legacy. This anthology is the first to elaborate Marie Neurath’s achievement as a transformer of knowledge for children and to analyze her distinctive, groundbreaking graphic method.

Mag. Dr. Susanne Blumesberger, MSc, Bibliotheks- und Archivwesen, Universitätsbibliothek, Vienna, Austria; Prof. Dr. Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Deutsches Seminar, Eberhard-Karls-Universität, Tübingen, Germany; Prof. Dr. Jörg Meibauer, Deutsches Institut, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany.