Textbooks for adults who want to learn German as a foreign language (Deutsch als Zeweitsprache, DaZ) have undergone several phases of change in the past. Amongst those the textbook "Deutsch aktiv", which was first published in 1979, has often been singled out for its supposed revolutionary character. By looking at the visual design of the text, whether or to what extent one can actually speak of a revolution of DaZ textbooks in the early 1980s.