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The William Gillespie Archive of German,  Axis  and Occupied Europe Posters,  1926-1954

Welcome to a collection of German posters and film ephemera that the prestigious  The Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television calls in 2024 "probably the most extensive collection of [German]  posters, photographs, correspondence, scripts, film magazines, publications, etc. that can be found in private hands to date. These include many artifacts that cannot be found in conventional archives at all."

Typical of the unsolicited comments we receive regularly:

" I am a German journalist writing about military movies in history…the newspaper with the articles you show a photo of is obviously hard to find, I was unable to get it from any other archive or shop in Germany - or, so far - around the world. However, the Information in it is truly important for my work. " 

-and, from a well-known American author of published books on Nazi Film --

"Your website, which I peruse often, your library, and the books you’ve written are singular achievements. I’ve said this before, and repeat it, because they reveal your mastery at research and discovery."

In November 2024 a university professor in Europe wrote: "I don't know what to say, thanks so much for sending me all of this. It is such a luxury, not only to have access to your collection, but also to have you always trying to find something I did not even ask for..."

 " Hi German films (dot) net, I am currently writing my senior thesis at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) on how Nazis and Soviets represented each other through propaganda films. Both the Karl Ritter and Crew of Dora books you have published are related to my topic and have an abundance of information I have not been able to find elsewhere due to the closing of archives and my limited knowledge of German and Russian."

FILM-HISTORICA,  Vol. 32, número 1 (Octubre 2023 , Journal of the Centre d'Investigacions Film-Història, University of Barcelona, Spain, stated:

The drought of research on filmmakers from the period 1933-45 has had its only fertile area in a place not exactly close to Germanic lands such as Sydney, Australia, where William Gillespie—a researcher with no previous resume in cinematographic themes, at least as far as I know—has been reviewing the work of a filmmaker who was one of the heavyweights of Nazi cinema but whose name, very probably, it will not sound familiar to anyone who has not studied that era a little: Karl Ritter (1888-1977).

-and-

"Gillespie’s book [Hitler Youth Quex – A Guide for the English–speaking Reader]  is a treasure trove for scholars of history, film history and propaganda more generally. This includes graduate and postgraduate students, early career researchers and more established academics. As such it is recommended for the essential classroom reading lists on any course dealing with film propaganda."  – The Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television, 2024.

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The  William Gillespie collection began in 1976 and the impetus was accelerated when, early on, the very rare Belgian poster for Harlan's JUD SÜß was acquired in France, which signalled that controversial and rare "Tendenzfilme" posters were not completely unobtainable on the open market.

Over time, auction houses, poster galleries, and then the internet, were all used to source new acquisitions. As the collection became better known, private collectors and poster dealers made private offers to the Gillespie Collection, and posters such as the two Czech originals for OLYMPIA, and many others, were bought off-market. Olympia was never released in Czechoslovakia in 1938.

There are also a few posters from 1926 - 1954 which are not Tendenzfilme, such as the original French poster for Clouzot's masterpiece LE CORBEAU made under German occupation, Riefenstahl's post-war TIEFLAND, or Emil Janning’s Oscar-winningDER LETZTE BEFEHL, which are important in their own right, and worthy of collection in any case.

The challenge of finding and collecting such "taboo" posters was a hobby that became more serious when university scholars and museums and other institutions began to ask permission to use images from the website for exhibitions, books, and scholarly journals. In some cases the posters were simply unavailable anywhere else at all; in other cases normal negotiations with state archives and institutions holding posters were too difficult, slow, and restrictive. We sympathise.

Unfortunately, most State archives have little or no money for poster restoration and preservation, despite their attempts to do so, whereas over 50 of the rarest posters in this Collection have been professionally de-acidified, cleaned, and backed on Japanese rice paper as part of our commitment to keeping these pieces of history intact. There is no doubt that these posters, because of their notoriety, would be buried deep inside the vaults of state archives and not available to scholars or to the film student or general public,  were it not for private collecting efforts such as ours.

Other William Gillespie Collection materials, such as issues of DER DEUTSCHE FILM (RFK, 1936-1943) have been scanned for scholars, who have no easy access to these rare Zeitschriften. The Index of the first 5 years of the magazine published is available at the upper right of this Home page menu bar.

The unavailability of virtually any pre–1945 original books or periodicals on German film and also of post–war film histories in Australia obliged us to purchase and have shipped Down Under hundreds of books in the past thirty years. These were needed for reference and for research, and cited in our various Karl Ritter books as appropriate. Our film book library can be found here.

Five books and one pamphlet have been published by or in conjunction with the Gillespie Collection to date. These titles are: Film Posters of the Third Reich (2007), Veit Harlan's "Testament 1945” (2010);  Karl Ritter - His Life and 'Zeitfilms' under National Socialism (2012; 2014 2nd edition );  The Making of The Crew of the Dora (2016), Legion Condor – Karl Ritter's lost 1939 feature film. and Hitler Youth Quex – A Guide for the English–speaking Reader (2022).  All titles are available for purchase from International Historic Films, Chicago, USA; other than the Film Posters book, which is out-of-print.

Acquiring original posters and other film materials from this historical era is a bit like stumbling blindfolded in a very large dark room, where one cannot see or comprehend the 'universe' of what was published and printed at the time in its entirety; and one doesn't know what one doesn't know...and there is now nobody alive to ask. So much was lost in the napalm fire–bombing of Germany, so much looted by the Red Army and so much by souvenir–hunting American GIs that present–day German archives have nothing close to a full set of magazine print–runs, or film posters, or related ephemera... and no money to even transfer nitrate 35mm film prints to safety film for posterity. The German Film Archives actually destroyed many original 35mm nitrate print inter–negatives and cinema prints from the Third Reich, after copying them (apparently without much attention to making quality prints); and only then onto 16mm stock.

In  our small way, new discoveries and surprises still happen from time to time;  and whole new areas of collection and pursuit become visible as the years go by. Hence the varied menu subjects above.

As of April  2024,  the Collection's posters alone have cost over €270,000- since inception. We have paid retail prices and won many auctions with the highest bid when an item was considered a "museum piece,"  and in our opinion probably would never be available again.  Only a handful of posters won over the decades have in fact surfaced later in another auction or catalogue. Had we not persisted in high bids we would not have 95% of the posters you see in our Poster Gallery at all. A quick look at the poster gallery will confirm how rare most of the posters are, as well as film stills, press–books and other ephemera from the era.

Very occasionally an item has been won at auction at an incredibly low price through pure luck. In January, 2005 the original Veit Harlan 22 page signed document from May 1945 entitled 'Wie ich zum Nationalsozialismus stand' was purchased for just £100. It is one of the only originals in the world. We were the sole bidder. The original Uƒa film script for Karl Ritter's ÜBER ALLES IN DER WELT was purchased for €35,50 in 2005, the iconic poster for S A MANN BRAND was won at auction in Berlin for €754,– in late 2006; the extremely rare poster for Karl Ritter's KADETTEN bought for €332,- in 2008, the 50 Tobis film stills for Riefenstahl's OLYMPIA won at live auction in Berlin in May, 2010 for €1,502.38 or just €30 per photograph. The extremely rare French poster SUIS–JE UN ASSASSIN? (ICH KLAGE AN) bought for €380 in July, 2009.

In May 2013, 4 unpublished "behind–the–scenes" photos from Karl Ritter's film BESATZUNG DORA were purchased for €10 each off a militia site. They wound up in our 2016 book on the film. In August 2014 the impossible–to–find original cinema owner's guide to HITLERJUNGE QUEX (the "Werberatschlag") was purchased for $109 net, after other non-film items in the military auction house 'Lot' were re–sold as unneeded. That same month, we won at auction for €157 a Wehrmacht soldier's personal photo album of his service in Russland in WWII; which included his private snapshots of BESATZUNG DORA being shot at the Gostkino air base south of Leningrad in October 1942. Some of those snapshots also wound up in our DORA book. In September 2015, the original QUEX sheet music was won at auction for €16....Miracles do happen. In May 2017, a pamphlet for the lost film BLUTENDES DEUTSCHLAND was purchased for €24,50.-

In June 2018 we discovered the lost Ufa film script for Karl Ritter's unfinished feature film, LEGION CONDOR (1939) in a used bookstore in Berlin for €350. It is our understanding after discussions with leading German and Austrian film historians and archivists,  and the Library of Congress in the USA; that it is the only script copy extant; as it does not reside in the libraries of the German Film Archives, the Berlin Kinemathek, Filmarchiv Austria, or any other leading collections we frequent.  It had been sold to the bookstore proprietor by an old man who found it at a flea market and thought it might have been worth something.

In December 2020, we were offered the ultra–rare "Das Programm von Heute" 4-page brochure for Leni Riefenstahl's first Nürnberg Party Day film, Der Sieg des Glaubens, later banned.  In 1922, we won at auction two silent film lithographic posters designed by Karl Ritter for US$349. In 2023 we won at auction the Kleinplakat for the 1933 propaganda film SA-Mann Brand for €400,49- .

You can see the most important and/or rarest items we acquire by looking at the menu on this Home page and choosing "What is new in 2024?" or the previous pages for earlier years, and follow our successes by re-visiting this column from time to time. The treasure hunt continues!

ABOVE: Our German film book library and film ephemera -- film stills, press–books, journals, DVDs --  shown in part, which is  overwhelmingly  devoted to National Socialist and related pre–1945 subject matter. Not shown are our 550+ original pre–1945 film posters and over 1,000 bound and loose German film newspapers from 1932 to 1945.

 "US surveys between 19/11/45 and 21/2/46 showed that 94% of Germans wanted to see older German films which had been produced in the Third Reich, and 55% of those were Germans who had not as yet had the opportunity to see any films (i.e. post–war);  despite those films being forbidden by American control.   ---Gerhard Stahr, Volksgemeinschaft vor der Leinwand?  – Der nationalsozialistische Film und sein Publikum © 2001, S. 276