What's new in 2020?

This page shall be updated regularly as any especially important or novel new film acquisitions are made in the course of the year. Stay tuned.

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Our first acquisition is this 1944 film advertisement for the premiere of the film  Junge Adler  at the prestigious Ufa cinema palace in Prague.

 

 

No film poster of Junge Adler was printed –– this confirmed by the Ufa handbill which you can find in our Poster Gallery under the film title -- but we do have 27 lobby cards and 5 press photos, as well as the film's press-book in our Collection, all of which we have scanned and made available to International Historic  Films in Chicago for their forthcoming 2020 DVD release; which will be remastered from an original 35mm print for top quality.  

ABOVE RIGHT: Eberhard (Hardy) Krüger in Junge Adler, his first film role at age fifteen.

 

 

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This piece of ephemera relates to the film Das Gewehr über!  It is a small handbill which folded in half represents a soldier at his watch post, then opens up to a description and advertisement for the film.  Die-cut film advertising was not as common in the war years as previously. 

 

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We have acquired three original press photos of the sensational "crimes against humanity"  trial of Veit Harlan in Hamburg, 1949, for his Jud Süß. The first photo is inside the court room, the second photo inside the Esplanade-Cinema in Hamburg where the court screened both Harlan's Jud Süß as well as Hippler's Der ewige Jude films for the judges and trial participants and observers; and the third photo shows him and well–wishers celebrating his acquittal, including hoisting him on their shoulders outside the court house. Very rare historically important originals!

News Flash! The second photo described above is under consideration to become the book cover illustration of a new English–language book on Veit Harlan currently being written. The author of the book has been in touch with us as to this possibility, once the photo was known to him.

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This very scarce Ross card for Olympia shows film director Leni Riefenstahl in a pose during the film–shoot. This card is a variation to her  better-known portrait cards issued for the film at the time; which we also have in our card collection. We are pleased to have found it. 

 

 

 

 

 

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This cinema pass was issued to German soldiers during their visit to Venice, Italy during WWII. It offers the soldiers free admission to any one of six movie theatres in Venice, as guests of the Italian Fascist Party in partnership with the "Strength through Joy" travel and hospitality organisation of the Third Reich operated by the Reich Labor Service. This rarely–seen  movie pass now part of our collection of German film ephemera.

 

 

 

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After starting the new year with a number of rare and interesting "small" film items, we are pleased to announce that we have won at auction two outstanding Italian film posters of German propaganda films –– those for Kampfgeschwader Lützow and for Ein Robinson. Heretofore we have refrained from announcing or listing posters until they are safely in our hands. However, as it shall be early June before we are able to receive these two posters, we are breaking our own rules to share them with you here.

 

Ein Robinson was directed by Arnold Fanck, famous for his silent "mountain films" starring Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl, and then later for the first–ever co–production between Germany and Japan with The Daughter of the Samurai. We own two original German posters for Ein Robinson, so are very pleased to add this Italian poster to the Collection. 

We also own both German posters and the Italian "Fotobusta" for the Luftwaffe film Kampfgeschwader Lützow,  so having this beautiful large (200 cm X 140 cm) Italian poster to expand our Collection is a fantastic acquisition. Lützow was the sequel to DII88  –– and we own all three DII88 original German posters! We have now  these images to our Poster Gallery.

 

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We have acquired 29 lobby cards from the films Sieg im Westen, Karl Ritter's Verräter, and from the German Navy feature films Kameraden am See and U-Boote-Westwärts!. Photographs from these films are hard to find. We show here one from each film. Although the scanner was too small to capture the entire lobby card, these scenes are representative of the photographs acquired for our Collection.  To see our inventory of German original film stills, please click here.  The inventory list only shows films with 10 or more stills and/or press photos in our Collection. We also have some hundreds of stills from other key films but there only a handful or less than ten photographs for each of those films.

With the new Sieg im Westen lobby cards added to those which are already in our Collection, we now have 26  lobby cards from this important film, as well as the ultra–rare, perhaps only surviving Gaufilmstelle poster in the world. The poster was drawn by graphic artist Mjölnir, who also designed one of the infamous Der ewige Jude posters in our Collection. We thus have both of Mjölnir's film posters. He did no others, but is famous for his many NSDAP and wartime propaganda posters, including those at war's end for the Volksturm.

         Sieg im Westen                                                 Verräter

 

 

               Kameraden am See                               U-Boote-Westwärts!

 

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We have won at auction in Berlin the:

ESTATE OF Herbert Jacobi,  a "Bildberichter" cameraman and Press photographer : [includes]  certificates, ID cards, correspondence, Reich Labor Service Kreuzburg / Upper Silesia, Marine-SA Berlin Stößensee, Rex-Film, State association of Berlin in the The Reich Association of the German Press (RDP), participation in anti–Soviet propaganda films etc., Zentral-Filmgesellschaft Ost, exams, complaint to the Reichsfilmkammer about working conditions of the production group of Hptm. A.D. Ernst Munck of the German Army Film in the Ukraine, contracts, expense reports etc., 1934-1945. Approx. 100 pieces up to A-4 format.

We have found Herr Jacobi listed as a Stills Cameraman in our 1943 Film Almanach Guide published by the Reichsfilmkammer/Reich Film Chamber:

 

 

The description of this Lot also mentions the film director Ernst Munch. Munch worked for ZFO in the Ukraine producing short agricultural films, such as Die Neue Ordnung and Die Nutzung des Hoflandes. This "New Order in agriculture" was promoted by Nazi Ideologe and Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg. It abolished the hated Bolshevik collective farms and returned the land to the farmers.  The propaganda appeal of this policy was to be widely promoted via this series of ZFO films, produced by Rex-Film in Berlin for the ZFO. (Rex-Film is also mentioned in this Jacobi documentation.)

Munch was also meant to be involved with a dozen planned film shorts on agriculture, of which only five films were completed by January 1944. Prior to WWII,  he was the A.D. on the feature film Familie Schimek (1935) and had acted in two other feature films in that year. After WWII, Munch apparently resumed making agricultural films in the BRD, despite his ZFO involvement. He is listed in the BFI data base as having made three such films in 1953, titled Aktuelle Landwirtschafliche Filmschau Nr. 6 and Aktuelle Landwirtschafliche Filmschau Nr.7, and a film entitled Ein Dorf spielt mit.

 

This is a most intriguing and exciting addition to the materials we have in our ZFO /Ostland Film archive.  Such material on the anti–Bolshevik filmmaking of the Third Reich inside the Occupied USSR between 1941 and late 1944 is exceeding rare and virtually impossible to find.  We have established a new Home page menu page for  ZFO/Herbert Jacobi  with documents from this man's estate.

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We have won in late February and mid-March at auction two German film posters:

The first poster is for the 1933 documentary film short, Du und die Sterne, produced and directed by Anton Kutter. He was a renowned documentary filmmaker, astrologer, and inventor of revolutionary lenses for telescopes. There is a telescope named after him. He  scripted and produced the unfinished 1937  German sci-fi film Weltraumschiff 1 startet... of which only a fragment exists today. For it's day, the film  exhibits wonderful trick–photography and special effects. See an image below RIGHT. Lithographic posters for short films was not so common in Germany, so this poster is quite a collector's item and of interest not only to German film collectors but also to the many astrology fans of Anton Kutter; who hold him in high regard. The poster looks to be in excellent condition.

The poster has been re–photographed and is now to be found in our Poster Gallery.

 

 

 

 

Our second auction win is the ultra–rare original 1941 Danish poster for the Harlan film, Jud Süß. It is DIN A1 sized (24.5 inches X 33.5 inches) and shows both the Terra Filmkunst and the Ufa logos, just as our French and Hungarian posters do.  Although the poster does not have any painted or photo–montaged graphic art on it, it is nonetheless an attractive poster with rich and deep colours. Note that actors Werner Krauss and Heinrich George are listed as the first two artists, not Ferdinand Marian or Krista Søderbaum. Both men were revered film stars across Europe for their silent and sound films, and very well-known to non-German audiences. This is the eighth poster for the Harlan film we have acquired over the past thirty years. The other seven Jud Süß posters can be found in our Poster Gallery above and this 8th one is now re–photographed and in the Poster Gallery as well.

 

 

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More Film–Kurier Tageszeitung issues found!

Our library has many hundreds of issues from this important Third Reich era film newspaper –– it was the Variety of its day -- the official daily film publication for the industry. But we have in fact only 92 issues for the years 1933–1939; which includes zero issues from 1933 and only one for 1936. This bundle of papers contains 38 issues from 1933, two issues each for 1936 and 1938, and then 35 issues for 1939.  We  have been examining them for interesting articles in our never–ending research efforts to enhance and to expand our knowledge of Third Reich film, and adding material across this website from them. Our library now has over 1,100 Third Reich film industry newspapers both in bound volumes and loose issues!

 

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We have purchased three always near–impossible–to–find Fotobustas for the Italian version of the film In the Red Hell by Edgar Neville. These are the first such Fotobusta which we have found in almost ten years. Here we show the seller's images of them, which have now been added to our Poster Gallery after being properly re-photographed.

 

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We have won at auction 31 film 2–sided handbills printed by the Gaufilmstelle, or the Regional Film Distribution Organisation of the Third Reich. Such handbills come up infrequently, and propaganda film titles do not surface often. This Lot  includes top films such as Sieg im Westen, Achtung – Feinde hört mit!, Feinde,  and Robert Koch, but also the exceedingly rare one for Hippler's Der ewige Jude.

We have now scanned and added these handbills to each film's respective poster page.

 

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---- MORE "ZFO" NEWS -----

A friendly Riga seller has fingered two dozen issues the German newspaper there from 1942 to 1944 which have articles on the ZFO and cinema advertising for Ostland Film GmbH and/or Riga Film GmbH.   We have now added new articles from these newspaper issues. Onwards and upwards!

 

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Normally we would not list the acquisition of a single film photograph as warranted, but in this case it is an ultra-rare press photo from 1940 for the Hippler film Der ewige Jude including the mimeographed caption on the verso. The top line of the caption reads: " Talmudic students - Little scholarship and a lot of cunning."  This marks the 9th photograph from the film to be found in our Collection. It is the standard 18 cm x 13.5 cm press photo size and is dated 2.12.1940.

 

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Nineteen 1937/1938 issues of the Gaufilmstelle Sachsen (i.e. Dresden area) FILM & FOTO magazine were won on a militaria website. Gaufilm publications are exceedingly difficult to find, so to have 19 full magazine issues is a coup. We have now added interesting information, articles, and images on this website. These images are from the auction:

 

FAR RIGHT image, above: The Gauleiter for Sachsen was Martin Mutschmann, who was captured by the Red Army at war's end and was executed in Moscow in 1947. Here he is pictured with a message in the 25th anniversary commemorative brochure for the U.T. cinema in Dresden, from our Collection. (Not part of the FILM & FOTO magazines.)

 

 

SHOWN RIGHT: To complement our two original 1942 Scalera Fiilm posters of the outstanding Italian military film Giarabub,  we have purchased after negotiation with the Italian seller, the third original poster variation of this film. We are delighted!

Incidentally, we have translated the German film review from the Berlin Film-Kurier Tageszeitung issue of 3 March 1943 here.

 

 

 

 

 

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We recently made a cash + trade swap with an important collector in Germany, from whom we obtained some very rare lobby cards, including two from Hans Westmar, two ultra-rare photographs from the now-lost film Blutendes Deutschland, one from the DIFU film In der roten Hölle, and one from the DIFU WWII military film Die weiße Schwadron. We show three of these lobby cards below. They are underway to us at this time.

We also won at auction two scarce  4 pp. cinema brochures  from the films Triumph des Willens, Hans Westmar, and the pro–Franco film ¡Arriba España! Gaufilmstelle handbill.

 

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Our sources in Latvia have found and sold to us five wartime Riga text–only cinema posters from the years 1942 – 1944, announcing the weekly programming of 15 greater Riga cinemas showing German feature films and newsreels. We are delighted to add them to our Collection and to our Ostlandfilm and ZFO area of research. We show here one of the posters. Note that in that week in April 1943, Riga enjoyed 15 different German feature films simultaneously. That is true for all five posters from 1942 to September 1944. Also note the number of pure propaganda films, and also the latest Agfacolor film, Die goldene Stadt.

The five Riga posters can now be found in our Poster Gallery.

 

 

Coincidentally, the Deutsche Zeitung im Osten newspaper issues with articles on Ostland Film and the ZFO (mentioned above on this page) arrived the same day we paid for the 6 posters, and their articles are not reprints from the Berlin film newspaper issues we show on our ZFO/Ostland Film GmbH page. Three major articles provide us with new facts and insights into the operation of these film production and distribution companies and to our better understanding of them.  We hav translated these articles and added them to our  additional ZFO/Ostland Film GmbH page in full English translation.

 

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We have won at auction (there were 20 bids!) a very rare original ring binder of the Reichsfilmarchiv, dating from 1942. It has 84 loose-leaf punch-hole pages in it. You can see it here on the left (the black binder). The description in the auction catalogue stated:

"Reichsfilmarchiv" Foreign sound films 1942, ring binder with detailed descriptions of the content of the films listed in the German Reich and the occupied territories.

We shall be adding any interesting material from this binder once we have received it from Germany.

The Reichsfilmarchiv was mostly stored in late 1944/45 in a salt mine  located in present-day Poland, where 12,100 Kilograms of material was transported out of Berlin for safe-keeping in November 1944. The material was either burned by the Germans at war's end before it could be found by the Soviets; or another theory is that it was set on fire by mistake by the inebriated Red Army soldiers when they were in the salt mines at war's end. The Bundesarchiv has some Reichsfilmarchiv materials but more of what survived is in Moscow as war booty.  Anything original is extremely rare. Heretofore, in over 25 years, we have found nothing from the Reichsfilmarchiv other than some lobby cards from the Veit Harlan film Das unsterbliche Herz and other NS feature films.  We show one of them below -- note the Archiv sticker on the verso, and the back of the  photograph scorched from smoke damage in the salt mine fire.

 

This binder, now safely in our Collection, is certainly one of the only ones in any private collection worldwide.

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As the year 2020 draws to a close, we have purchased two very desirable and rare items through a private offer. The first is the cinema owners guide/Werberatschlag to the Karl Ritter film Im Kampf gegen den Weltfeind. This has been on our Want List for two decades. Secondly, the never–before–seen by us  anywhere 'Das Programm von Heute' for the first Leni Riefenstahl Nazi Party Day Rally film, Der Sieg des Glaubens. The program comes with the artist card, in this case of Hitler. This is an exceedingly scarce film brochure, as the film fell out of political favour once Ernst Röhm was murdered in July 1934; as he features alongside almost as Hitler's equal in many scenes..  The film was understandably overshadowed by the far better planned  and polished second Party film, Triumph des Willens. Interestingly, this program text leads with an article reporting a conversation with Riefenstahl on how the film was produced –– a film she disowned after 1945 and refused to admit having overseen.  Both the Weltfeind and Sieg des Glaubens film pieces are an amazing way to usher 2020 out......

 

At left is the Illustrierter Film-Kurier cinema program for Der Sieg des Glaubens, from our Collection. Heretofore it has been the single piece of promotional material we have ever found in 30 years. 

Here is the compiled list of "Das Programm von Heute" programs by two of Germany's most avid  and extensive collectors of these film programs. As you can see, there is no Der Sieg des Glaubens listed. In fact there is no number skipped in the alphabetisation of the surrounding film titles. This therefore is probably an unnumbered "Das Programm von Heute," which was sometimes the case.

 

 

Below are two scans of the "Das Programm von Heute" on the film we have just acquired, including the postcard. The format of the program brochure is 21 cm X 29,5 cm; or 8 1/4 inches x 11 1/2 inches. This larger format was used in the very early years of "Das Programm von Heute" when the firm was located in Stuttgart. After it shifted to Frankfurt/Main and then thereafter finally to Berlin, the format changed from being rectangular to square, and then in the latter years of the war, was abandoned for three-fold A4 sheets, which were letter envelope-size when folded.

 

 

 

 

In tandem with the Weltfeind guide, we acquired this colourful text–only 1939 cinema poster promoting the film across greater Berlin:

 

 

Hold the presses! We also acquired the same style text poster for the Vereingte (United) cinema chain in Berlin for the Karl Ritter  WWI military film PATRIOTEN, which won a gold medal at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. The photo sent by the seller is not very clear but we will of course re-photograph it in early 2021 when it arrives. We reproduce to the right of the poster the graphic art used on the poster scanned from our Werberatschlag/cinema owner's promotion guide to the film, issued by the Ufa film studio prior to the film's premiere.

 

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On 25 December we acquired the 1932 German film poster for the Heinz Paul WWI film Tannenberg.  Director Heinz Paul was director of the two classic WWI features Douaumont and the Der Ring um Verdun; the Ernst Udet/Jürgen Ohlsen film Wunder des Fliegens: Der Film eines deutschen Fliegers, and also of the Kameraden am See,  the Spanish Civil War German Kriegsmarine film from 1938. Tannenberg, released on 8 September 1932, focused on a notable German victory and was in sharp contrast to recent anti-war films such as Westfront 1918. Tannenberg served as a national symbol in Germany, and was re-issued in 1936 during the Third Reich.

 

 

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