Kakerlak, oder, Geschichte eines Rosenkreuzers aus dem vorigen Jahrhunderte
Kakerlak, a German novel by Johann Karl Wezel, published in Leipzig in 1784 by the Dyk publishing house and aimed at a German reading public interested in Rosicrucian themes. Its single engraved frontispiece-style plate shows a young man sitting against a tree trunk in a wooded landscape, with a bird perched in the branches above and a distant valley opening behind him, captioned with a line of German verse beneath. A designer could take from it the quiet sentimental pastoral mood of late eighteenth-century book illustration, with its fine hatched line work, open vignette framing, and generous white margin around the scene.
