Fliegende Blatter

The upsurge in publishing in the sixteenth century turned the Reformation into a media event, and printed products of every kind superseded the communication methods used thus far. Flyers were particularly successful in reaching their audiences as an easily affordable information medium. Renowned artists such as Hans Sebald Beham, Lucas Cranach Sr, Albrecht Durer and Michael Ostendorfer produced the woodcuts for these single-sheet prints, which thematised the political, religious and societal happenings of the time. Portraits of protagonists, such as Luther and Karl V., but also fables and proverbs as well as reports on miracles and celestial phenomena, catastrophes and crime all found their platform in these pages. One of the largest collections of illustrated single-sheet prints in the Palace Museum of the Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha provides a rich treasure trove of prints that informed the Reformation. The Gotha inventory of around 700 flyers from 1480 to 1599 is today considered unprecedented. Now for the first time it has been published in its entirety.