Resumen de Karlstadt's "Wagen": The First Visual Propaganda for the Reformation
Wittenberg reformer Andreas Karlstadt is notorious as one of the Reformation’s most hard-line iconoclasts, yet in collaboration with artist Lucas Cranach he created the first piece of evangelical visual propaganda. Karlstadt was the mastermind behind the “Wagen” broadsheet of 1519, which did not depict or refer to Martin Luther. Cranach’s woodcut of wagons, horses and men travelling to Heaven and to Hell was executed with vigour and skill. But the obscure iconography devised by Karlstadt failed to communicate key ideas, and his theologically complex, awkwardly worded texts chaotically swamped the imagery. The broadsheets set off heated debate in print. Above all, inflamed Karlstadt’s conflict with Johannes Eck, who would become the enemy of both Karlstadt and Luther; a conflict also played out in the famous Leipzig debate of 1519. This essay reveals for the first time the scope and depth of the broadsheet’s aims, failures, and significance for Reformation visual culture.
