Lenardo und Blandine

One of the earliest known German-language comics, Lenardo und Blandine was published in 1783 by Privilegirte Akademische Handlung. This single-issue work, written by Gottfried August Bürger and illustrated by Joseph Franz von Göz, adapts a tragic ballad into a sequential picture story—predating the modern comic strip by decades. Its pioneering use of illustrated panels to tell a narrative makes it a landmark in the history of the medium.