Posted on: 6 June 2013

Article:
How German technology shaped ritual dynamics in India.

The technique of lithographic printing was one of the greatest German inventions. This new technology not only revolutionized mass production of visual imagery in Germany and Europe as a whole, but it also had a major impact on the religion and the independence movement in India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Lithography allowed cheap and fast reproduction of multi chrome-imagery on a large scale, as compared to the earlier tedious process of copying by hand or by woodcuts. Alois Senefelder, an innovative playwright from Bavaria (1771-1834) invented this technology using a special stone plate (litho) and refined his printing method, named lithography. By 1797, it had spread like wildfire all over the world. Soon, India became the greatest consumer of its products -- so much so that the most popular medium quality of the limestone schist, the only stone that can be used in the process, which was quarried in Solnhofen in Bavariam, was dubbed 'India'.

The mass produced chromolithographs, oleographs and picture postcards that were printed in Germany for the Indian market during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries played a major role in shaping the religious, social and political developments in India. Before the arrival of German prints, the majority of Indians had no experience of possessing visual images of their Deities. Indian miniature paintings belonged to royal families or temples, and were accessible only to a few. Printed religious and mythological pictures brought about a democracy of the visual image and opened up Hinduism and other belief systems to a much larger group of their adherents across class and caste divisions, which changed the nature and manner of worship.

The lure of these brightly coloured German lithographs and oleographs depicting Indian subjects was so great that some enterprising Indians imported German printing machines and technicians to India and began to produce these prints, which were often labeled "Printed as Germany".

Read more:

http://bit.ly/Zv75Jw


Printed in 'German News', Bi-monthly magazine of the German Embassy in New Delhi.


 View Post on Facebook

Comments from Facebook

interesting

V. Interesting !

Litho Prints from the Raja Ravi Verma Press are a collectors item today..

I used to have a massive collection of old Hindu Iconographical posters, that I collected in India between 77-80, mostly in Gujerat and Calcutta. The actual 'German Prints' were fantastic quality, the 'Printed 'as' Germany' were no where near as good. I think the above artist maybe Vadudev Pandya. S.S. Brijbasi & Sons, who were originally based in Karachi before partition, had some fabulous German prints by the famous Narottam Narayan from Nathdwar. The most well known being Murli Manohar & Ayodhya Pati Ram. I had the good fortune to meet Narottam before he passed and commissioned an oil painting of Sri Chaitanya & Nityananda which hangs now in Radha Desh, a massive Chateau and Krishna Temple in the Ardennes in Belgium not far from Liege.

I have quite a few of these at home :)

I've just checked and this print is not Vasudev Pandya as I previously thought. Yes, I used to also have many prints from Ravi Verma, Lonavla press, these were actually very early but cruder quality printing than the other German prints. There was a great Bengali artist called Naren, who did some great picture around 1903. Shital Banerjee came later with the most extensive series, printed on three colour copper plates, originally from an English company in Calcutta.

They've started to reprint many of the Ravi Verma pictures in high quality.

Hare Krishna! :)

dhyanasankalpam.blogspot.in/2010/03/calender-gods-and-goddesses-enter-every.html

Prof Christopher Pinne who did extensive research on Indian Calender art was awardeda Padma this year, please correct me if i am wrong on this.

Thank you Mathura Das!

'Photos of the Gods': The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India By Christopher Pinney http://bit.ly/ZSDKuT

PDFs here ( http://wiki.phalkefactory.net/index.php?title=PHOTOS_OF_GODS )

Are these german prints available now?

Raja Ravivarma had started his Litho press at Karla, Near Pune. Where he used to print his painting for mass production. Nowadays the press is ruined and not allowed to go inside for the visitors.

nice

Thank U Ratnesh Sir :)