Abstract

About ten years ago the literary William J. T. Mitchell and the literary historian Gottfried Boehm declared the iconic turn in all sciences, which should have rehabilitated picture as a specific form of constructing meaning, independent of language. Their inspiration was the linguistic turn in philosophy and sciences in the 20th century. Thereby they brought to life a discussion, which, especially in German speaking countries, is gradually rebuilding the systematic of all sciences. Still more frequent are the calls for „Bildwissenschaft“, i.e. for a special icon-science which should be at least as successful as was the linguistic turn. The paper offers a systematic outline of this discussion held during the last 15 years. In addition to that it gives the basic historical, bibliographical and institutional data concerning the rise of this new icon-science