During summer and winter of 1957-1958, a student at the Offenbach School of Applied Arts produced two hundred watercolours containing words. Over forty years later these works, reported as lost, were rediscovered while the student had acquired the reputation of being one of the outstanding artists of his generation, in association with avant-gardists of the 60’s. His rise to fame begins with 1.Werksatz (“1st Series of Works”) which greatly contributes to remodelling our perception of what a work of art offers of our body, space, time and relation with another. What meaning can be extracted from these early works? How are the “word-images” (Wortbilder) integrated in Franz Erhard Walther’s art as a whole? And finally, how do they related to the history of art that constantly reshuffles and redeals the cards?