To help us keep this website going, please go to our POSTER
STORE and purchase something! Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What was new in 2017 ?

Our first purchase leading into the new year is six original 1940 photographs of the premiere of the Italian film classic by Augusto Genina, The Siege of the Alcazar or L'Assedio dell'Alcazar, which took place in Madrid in 28 October 1940. Our Collection has original Italian and German posters from the film, as well as the DIFU German language press-book on the film for the dubbed version which was released in Nazi Germany over a year later, in November 1941. These particular photos were issued by the Italian film studio Productora Film Bassoli to promote the film's international distribution.The film won the Mussolini Cup at the 1940 Venice Film Festival for being the Best Italian Film. In our book Karl Ritter on page 141,  it is pointed out that a German script about the siege of the Alcazar was muted by the Uƒa film studio and a production by Ritter was in discussion just before the Genina film was premiered in Italy.  At a private preview screening of the film hosted by Minister Joseph Goebbels in Berlin on 22 September 1940,  with Ritter and other film directors in attendance, Dr. Goebbels said that a German telling of the story could not possibly better the Genina film, and the Uƒa project was therefore scrapped. The working title of that film was "The Embassy."  The photos are now inside our Alcazar poster listing in the POSTER GALLERY.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The original German press book for the de Robertis 1941 submarine rescue  film Uomini sul Fondo ("Men at the bottom") was acquired and added to our Film Publications library of pre–1945 film press books and "Werberatschäge" cinema owners' guides for individual movies.  The German title was Einer für Alle ("One for All").  We have both the original 16mm release wartime Italian poster for the film and the Protektorat German/Czech poster for the film in our Collection., as well as a 1942 French press book  –– the film in Occupied France being called SOS 103, the '103'   based on the submarine's classification. We also purchased at the same time 3 stills or press photos from the film. Two stills are from the USA release, and one from the German release.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       CineGraph Index volumes for the Illustrierte Film–Kurier newspaper 1939–1942  also acquired.

 

Our film book library is being enlarged by the acquisition of four Index volumes for the Film–Kurier Tageszeitung, originally published in 1995 by the CineGraph publishing house in Hamburg. The Indexes were found at a used bookstore after a decade–long search on–line, and include the annual volumes for years 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1942. The Indexes list every newspaper article in every issue of the Film–Kurier, by name of article, and by topic - such as film review, technical, artist/director interview, etc; citing issue date, issue #, and page # of each article. Needless to say, this expedites research enormously. We had in our collection heretofore only the final volume of the series in our library - the one pictured LEFT for the years 1943–1945 inclusive. (One volume sufficed for these late war years, as the newspaper dropped from five times weekly, to three times weekly, then once weekly.) That volume covered, thankfully,  all the pre–production, filming, and post–production months of Karl Ritter's Luftwaffe film BESATZUNG DORA, which made finding articles considerably easier to locate. The Indexes were only published as a first edition and were never reprinted. With our major acquisition last year of hundreds of bound issues of that newspaper from these years, the Indexes will prove very useful in future research. All five volumes – 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943–1945 are now to be found in our film book library.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 The  Uƒa Feldpost  issue of May, 1942 added to our  Library

An extremely rare Uƒa Feldpost issue has been added to our Collection.  It is from May 1942 and covers news from the film studio for those Uƒa employees serving at that time in the German Armed Forces. It's nickname was "the green comradeship newspaper," and it called the men who received it "Uƒa-Soldaten."  The issue, amongst other films, reports on the progress of Karl Ritter's GPU, stating that it's final scenes are currently underway in Paris.

In addition to this 1942 issue, we have the complete years of both 1943 and 1944 in our Zeitschriften collection. The last issue published was dated December 1944, and was mimeographed rather than offset printed.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

In 2016 we acquired the until then unknown to us  "Programm von Heute" actor's card for the early NSDAP film, Hans Westmar (1933), showing actor Emil Lohkamp as Westmar in his SA uniform (see "What was new in 2016?" or our Westmar poster in the Poster Gallery.) We have now acquired the extremely rare and heretofore unseen Rosskarte actor's card -- and this one autographed! - by the actor Heinz Klingenberg, who appeared in the early NSDAP film SA Mann Brand (also 1933).  

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In our book The Making of the Crew of the Dora on the Karl Ritter film BESATZUNG DORA, photos of the Gostkino, USSR Luftwaffe air base in October 1942 were reproduced. The photos were taken by an airman,  on duty at the time, so our book provides never before published  "behind the scenes" photos of the making of the film. This base was being used  at this time by the Luftwaffe Fernaufklärer (Long distance reconnaissance) squadron in support of the Siege of Leningrad and other battles with the Red Army, and key scenes of the film was shot there during these WWII campaigns.   We have just acquired a few more private snapshots taken by Gostkino air base soldiers in 1942 (although not necessarily the same month of October, when Ritter and his Uƒa film crew and the actors were there...).  The one shown at RIGHT is of the Luftwaffe "Bildstelle" or the Photographic Lab, where the air reconn film was immediately developed and then scrutinised for intelligence reports and bomber targeting. 

21 February 2017:  A further WWII soldier's photo album  of private snapshots taken in the Pleskau - Luga - Ropti - Gostkino air base between December 1942 and June 1943 (i.e.: two months to eight months after the filming was completed in that area of the Occupied USSR) has been acquired.  Here is one photo of the Schloß in Ropti taken in December 1942; and then the destroyed Schloß in Gostkino in June 1943. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Imperial Japan released the Hans Steinhoff anti-British propaganda film OHM KRÜGER in 1942 during the height of the Japanese attack on British colonies in the Pacific, as well as their occupation of the Philippines and of French Indochina. We have acquired a very rare Imperial Japan film advertisement postcard promoting OHM KRÜGER to the Japanese population. The Japanese title for the film was "Sekai ni Tsugi" or "Telling the World".... The card is shown on the left, and the rough translation provided by the Tokyo seller reads as follows:

"Having a look at incomparable inhuman tactics done by the British Army in Boer, South Africa, described in this film, we must be more determined than ever never to cease attacking the US and UK. "

"The Boer War. This was a brutal war for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. An unforgivable criminal war. Now we must look at Britain's detestable brutal acts recorded in the World War history. "

"Cinematography: Fritz Arno Wagner. Directed by Hans Steinhoff. Starring Emil Jannings.  "General release: 2 Sept."   "Germany. Tobis' large-scale film. Distribution in Japan by Gaikoku Eiga (Foreign Films) Co; Ltd."

Our Collection also has a 1942 magazine full–page advertisement for the film published in the occupied Philippines, which we have displayed in the drop-down menu listings for OHM KRÜGER.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rare letterhead from OSTLAND FILM G.m.b.H. in wartime Riga added to the Collection.

The film production and distribution efforts of Germany during the invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union and the Baltic States in 1941–1944 are a fascinating aspect of German film history. It is only within the past dozen years that research on this topic has appeared in scholarly journals and in two books – one in English and one in German. Our Collection has two extremely rare original film posters from 1943 Riga and we have a special website page devoted to this topic which can be found here. 

Our Baltic colleague has unearthed for us an August 1944 Riga "Splendid Palace" cinema ticket (not shown here) which dates only two months before the Red Army re–took Latvia from Germany; and also found for us was the piece of OSTLAND FILM G.m.b.H. stationary shown above. It is a Telegram sheet for Ostland Film's staff to fill in to send a telegram. These pieces join our other Ostland Film ephemera, such as cinema tickets, envelopes, and the two posters. In our collection also are all of the original 1941–1943 German film newspapers which had coverage on Riga Film G.mb.H; Ukraine Film G.m.b.H; Filmvertrieb Ost; Ostland Film G.m.b.H; and their Zentralfilmgesellschaft Ost headquarters back in Berlin.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Two rare film handbills from 1928 and

1936 

were purchased in April 2017 ---- one advertising the 1928 Louis Ralph early sound version of the film KREUZER EMDEN, which preceded the re-released 1934 version. We have a poster of each sound version in our collection! The second handbill is for the 1935 film IM TROMMELFEUER DER WESTFRONT. Each handbill can be seen in a much larger readable format if you search for the film poster in our Search engine (or Poster Gallery), where you will find the handbill as an added image above the respective poster. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Acquired - the press–book to the 1941 History of Flight in Germany film, Die Himmelstürmer.  This 24 page guide to the film is not often found for sale.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

We have a mint condition original German poster for the Emil Jannings film Traumulus  in our Collection – the National Socialist remake, of sorts, of the Jannings Die blaue Engel  film but without Marlene Dietrich or Kurt Gerron. We have now won at auction the second German original poster for the film, but it has no text or credits printed on it. It is the "Auslandsvertriebsplakat," or foreign film market poster. It was printed in Germany for export to a foreign country where it would have text added in the appropriate language of the destination land by means of over–printing.  Naturally we would wish for the fully finished poster of a film, but having the second graphic sheet for it, even without text, is a worthy acquisition and one not likely to be bettered in our lifetimes. 

We also won at auction the German poster for the Ucicky film Der zerbrochene Krug, also starring Emil Jannings but it is in miserable condition and will need to be linen–backed before we photograph it. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

In early May The German Film Dot Net Collection acquired via auction the great actor Werner Krauss‘ personal copy of the film script of Jud Süß (D, 1940, Veit Harlan). The script is annotated by Krauss on the reverse side of the scattered script pages, inserting new additional dialogue missing from this early version of the printed film script....dialogue which is found in the final film version as spoken by Süß Oppenheimer's enforcer, Levy. This is an amazing piece of German film history, and a true "there is only one-in-the-world" object. The script is now in our Collection.  Here are two photographs from the auction house catalogue.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

We have traded a Zarah Leander/Marika Rökk cinema owner's guide for yet another lobby card for the Karl Ritter film Besatzung Dora which we did not have in our Ritter Collection.  This is then the 21st original film lobby card or press photo from the banned film we have, out of thirty scenic stills issued by the Ufa Publiicty Department in the lead–up to the film's planned release date in March 1943, which never transpired. Onwards and upwards!

Two WWII military photographs associated with the Dora  filming at the Gostkino Luftwaffe airbase in the Occupied USSR in October 1942 have been acquired. The photos show Oblt. Karl Hütten, BELOW LEFT, who was "Bildoffizier" at the base, responsible for the all–important Photographic Lab, which scrutinised aerial photos made of enemy positions by the air reconnaissance flights. The photo, BELOW RIGHT, is of Hauptmann Johannes Weineck of the 5 (F.)/122 squadron. Both men are mentioned numerous times in Chapter 9 in our The Making of The Crew of the Dora .  Captain Johannes Weineck and his wife also attended Karl Ritter's 54th birthday party held on 4 November 1942 at the Ritter's villa in Uƒastadt Babelsberg. Clearer images of the two photos will replace these vendor photos when we update our website again in August.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dateline 26 June, Berlin:  We have acquired two silent film posters which Karl Ritter designed as graphic artist in the mid-to-late-1920's for Emelka Film and for Reichsliga Film. As soon as they are received we will be photographing them for our Poster Gallery.  These are very rare film posters designed by Ritter prior to his entering the film industry as a Dramaturg, Producer or Director in his own right.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More  BESATZUNG DORA   acquisitions made!

In our research for our two books on KARL RITTER and then on THE MAKING OF THE CREW OF THE DORA, we had to use archive photocopies or downloads of two interesting and important sources. Ever since, we have been searching for actual hard copies of these publications, so that we could add them to our DORA Collection.

 

 

 

The first item now acquired is the 8 September 1945 issue of the Communist Party newspaper DEUTSCHE VOLKSZEITUNG published in Berlin reporting that "Film Director and War Criminal" Karl Ritter was in Rosenheim prison in the Western (i.e. USA) sector of occupied Germany, and that he should be found guilty of `poisoning German youth' and war crimes for his propaganda films. The article in shown here:

 

The second item just acquired is the 19 September 1942 very rare English language edition of the Luftwaffe weekly magazine DER ADLER, which has a two-page spread on the film work underway in France on the Ritter film. We reproduced the photographs found in that issue in our two books, using high quality downloads of the scanned pages as acquired from a historical archive. But now we have the actual English language edition for our Collection. All good!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

KARL RITTER was an accomplished graphic artist in the 1920s and early 1930s before he became a film producer and film director. He worked for  Südfilm AG, Reichsliga Film, and for EMELKA Film in both Munich and Berlin, as well as for Walt Disney Produktion. As a graphic artist, he designed 365 film posters in this time period. We have just acquired the first–ever  film posters for our Collection which were designed by Ritter. They both were produced and lithographed  in 1927. One is a Heidelberg film and the other a 'Pat und Patachon' comedy film, Schwiegersöhne.  We show here an image of the Heidelberg poster. Both of these posters are now shown in our Poster Gallery.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

We sold the actor Fritz Rasp estate material we acquired last year to a leading film institution, and used the proceeds to purchase this outstanding and very unique 1935 film poster. It was designed by noted film poster master graphic artist Kurt Geffers for the Reich Film Chamber and the Propaganda Ministry, advertising the International Film Congress in Berlin. This  poster has now been photographed and added to our Poster Gallery.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Fourteen original lobby cards for the Hans Albers Baltic military melodrama, Henker, Frauen Soldaten, have been acquired. We have two original film posters for this war film. The film itself is still forbidden and no commercial re–release of it was ever made in post–war Germany or in other countries. We are delighted to have found these photos, which are the first for this film we have located and collected.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This year started with the purchase of rare photographs of the Franco Spain premiere of Augusto Genina's The Siege of the Alcazar, as reported at the very top of this web page. As the calendar year reaches it's final quarter, we have acquired the original 56 page publicity materials for the film published in Rome by the Bassoli film studio. The description of the book is as follows:

In 8º (about 24 x 33.5 cm / 9 1/2 x 13 inches), 56 pp. Editorial brochure. Text in Italian, French, German, English and Spanish. Beautiful color charts with portraits of the protagonists of the film. Interesting and uncommon story-telling, notes on the workmanship and the beautiful images of the movie about the civil war in Spain. The siege of the Augustus, Genina's Alcazar, made by the Bassoli brothers also in Spanish version, shot at Cinecitta and Toledo.

 

Our collection has some original film posters as well as the German film version press book and some film stills as issued by DIFU (the Germany Italy Film Union distribution company.) We have now added images and excerpts from the press–book to a new web page devoted to ALCAZAR, which is available as a drop-down Menu item at the top of our main home page.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Through this Website's Contact feature, we have been offered for sale the rare Protectorate wartime poster for Karl Ritter's famous Stukas (1941) film by a collector in Prague.  This has been a wonderful year for us in terms of Karl Ritter --- 12 more Besatzung Dora film stills/lobby cards acquired from two sources, then the two outstanding silent film posters from 1927 which were designed by a younger Karl Ritter as graphic artist for Emelka Film AG and for Südfilm AG in Munich; and now this great-looking mint condition 30cm x 94cm "Daybill" style poster from German Böhmen & Mähren. Interestingly, the poster sports a stamped set of dates for the screening of the film between 3 and 4 June 1944. This illustrates the use of the film, along with about twenty others, which were reprised in a late war re-release into cinemas of the best Nazi propaganda films;  in a desperate attempt at rebuilding sinking morale. The poster is en route to us Down Under. The images here are from the collector, which we present in this announcement. 

 

 

No sooner had we added the Stukas poster from Böhmen & Mähren to this website than we found for sale the Bulgarian original poster for Ritter's 1936 film, Verräter (Traitor). The poster imagery was designed by Peter Pewas and is an exact contemporary reproduction of one of the original German poster designs for the film. In light of the fact that we do not have the German poster, this one is most welcome.  We have added the image to our Poster Gallery, with more information about Pewas and the poster to be found there. You can also Search this website under " Pewas " and see all the original posters we own from this remarkable poster artist and filmmaker. To have acquired two Karl Ritter posters in the space of one week from various sources is extraordinary. Onwards and upwards!

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANOTHER Besatzung Dora related photograph acquired:

This Luftwaffe photo from mid–1942 was taken at the Buc airbase near Versailles at a celebration of the 1. (F.)/123  Long-range Reconnaissance Squadron, after their 1,000th sortie. This squadron, including some of the airmen shown in the photograph, was involved later that year with the Karl Ritter film Besatzung Dora scenes filmed at the airbase. Photos taken during the actual film shoot can be found in both of our books KARL RITTER – HIS LIFE & 'ZEITFILMS' UNDER NATIONAL SOCIALISM (2nd ed.) and  in THE MAKING OF THE CREW OF THE DORA. Both books can be ordered via our Poster Shop on this website.

__________________________________________________________________________

We have just acquired the annual film distribution catalogue for the small film production company Hammer Tonfilm Verleih GmbH; listing twelve films for 1935/36; of which only a handful were actually produced and/or distributed. The company went bankrupt in 1937, despite it being owned by Älte Kampfer for the NSDAP, Hans Hammer. We show here the cover of that catalogue, along with two pages on films which never saw the light of day --a WWI homage called Flandern and a Hans Steinhoff film on Richard Wagner.  The Wagner film, again with Steinhoff, was later annnounced by Tobis Filmkunst during WWII, but it once again failed to materialise. Incidentally, all the graphic designs and illustrations for each film were drawn by artist Erich Meerwald, who designed our Blutendes Deutschland (1933) poster, our Trenck der Pandor and ...reitet für Deutschland posters, as well as many Third Reich and BRD postage stamps.

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

To our Poster Gallery we have just added the slightly larger than A3 sized "window poster" for the celebrated Uƒa submarine film, Morgenrot. It joins the five other posters from Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Imperial Japan in our Collection.

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

We have just acquired an original large dimension 1942 Fascist Italy film poster for the propaganda war film, Giarabub, directed by Alessandrini. Our Collection has six Fotobusta from this film but heretofore no actual poster. This one was designed by noted graphic designer Paolo Tarquini, and is a huge 200 cm x 140 cm in size.  It has been added to our Poster Gallery.

Alessandrini's 1942 military film is about the British assault on the Italian held Libyan city.
It is one of the most famous war films from Mussolini's Italy; about a group of Italians who are under siege by the British in Libya. The situation is hopeless for the Italians and it is clear that they will lose. The propaganda was intended to give a patriotic message to the Italians -- the worst days of the war were approaching, and that the right thing to do is to remain calm and dignified. There is also a feeling of sacrifice for the motherland in the face of overwhelming odds.

The film was exported with German language dubbing as Die Letzten von Giarabub. We have some German film stills for this German "DIFU" distribution release for Third Reich cinemas; one of which is presented in the Fotobusta listings for the film in our Poster Gallery. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What year end would be complete without a last minute surprise? In our case, it was purchasing the extremely rare July 1942 self–congratulatory 36 page booklet called "Two Years." This was published by the German Propaganda Division in (Occupied) Paris, heralding two hard years of work in overseeing all press, radio, cinema, theatre, advertising, posters and publicity for France. We show here the booklet's cover with the Propaganda Abteilung Frankreich's symbol, the Introduction by the Kommandeure, Major Heinz Schmidtke (pictured); and the double page spread showing work in the "Filmprüfstelle" or Film Censorship Office. Major Schmidtke was heavily involved with film censorship personally. For instance, he forbad the Wolfgang Lebeneiner film Bismarck in France as the anti–French stance of Bismarck might be "misinterpreted." He also forbad Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will in these war years; even though the film had won the prestigious cinematic Gold Medal in Paris in 1936. He encouraged the french language version of Hippler's Der ewige Jude; and made sure it was in cinemas in conjunction with the 1942 major anti–Jewish exhibition 'Le Juif et la France." Certainly one of our most unique library acquisitions. This publication has now been given it's own page on this website.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The year 2017 brought to us two wonderful silent film posters designed by Karl Ritter in 1927, and two more Karl Ritter film posters (for Verräter and for Stukas) from Bulgaria and Böhmen & Mähren/Protektorat respectively... 4 more very rare film stills acquired from Ritter's Besatzung Dora through a trade with a collector in Hamburg; as well as the astonishing acquisition of great actor Werner Krauß' personal notated copy of the film script for Jud Süß.  The most valuable and interesting acquisitions, large and small, are noted on this page above. The 1942 original film poster for the Italian military film Giarabub deserves mention here, as well.  Onwards and upwards!