Litfaß (Litfass) Posters
Seven very large posters in the Collection were printed in Vienna between 1930 and 1936 to be posted on Litfaß poster street columns. The posters are those for Karl Ritter's VERRÄTER, for Ucicky's DAS FLÖTENKONZERT VON SANSSOUCI and his MORGENROT, STOSSTRUPP 1917, DIE LETZTEN VIER VON SANTA CRUZ, and for the Charles Willy Kaiser film IM TROMMELFEUER DER WESTFRONT (1936). A German Litfaß poster for Louis Ralph's 1934 re-make of his silent film version KREUZER EMDEN is 193 cm x 93 cm.
Ernst Litfass was a Berliner who in 1854 proposed that a tall advertising street column be manufactured to organize and display public posters in a tidy, manageable way, and in 1855 one hundred of these columns were presented in Berlin. They became very popular, spread to other German cities, and made Litfass' fortune in advertising. They are also common in other European cities even today.
The VERRÄTER poster is 188 cm X 124 cm, or 6 ft 3 inches X 4 ft 1 inch large. The other posters are 288 cm X 126 cm, or 9 ½ ft. X 4 ft 2 inches large.
Above Right: A Litfass column in Kreuzberg, Berlin in 2010.