In this paper, we develop an approach to the study of compact K~ hler manifolds which admit mappings of everywhere maximal rank into quotients of polydiscs, eg into Riemann surfaces or products of them. One main tool will be a detailed study of the harmonic maps in the corresponding homotopy classes (for definition and general properties of harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds see [3]). Starting with a result of Siu, we prove in Sect. 2 that the local level sets of the components of these mappings are analytic subvarieties of the domain. This, together with a generalization of the similarity principle of Bers and Vekua which is proved in the appendix and a residue argument, enables us to give conditions involving the Chern and K~ ihler classes of the considered manifolds, under which this harmonic map is of maximal rank everywhere and, in case domain and image have the same dimension, in