Christian, were many, if not most, of these types of posters purposefully destroyed as they were found or discovered, after the War ended?
Hi Jeff,
For sure many were destroyed both during and after the war, although even I have been surprised
to see how many managed to survive.
There were 3 or 4 posters in my collection that were saved by American and Canadian servicemen
during the war who collected many posters to save them from being destroyed. Of course this happened
all over with copious amounts of war souvenirs being collected by the Allies and sent home.
There was another poster that was pulled out of a wall that was crammed with other items as makeshift
insulation.... Many crazy stories of how some of these escaped being burnt or torn to pieces.
Norway is one of the few countries that has detailed information on how many of certain types of poster
were printed and in what sizes (Occupied Norway - I.E. Pro-German collaboration posters).
I have one of these hard to find books that details this data which is invaluable to a collector like me.
If only some records of German posters had survived that would make things easier, although given
the pounding that many of their cities sustained and of course the destruction of many official records,
I very much doubt any valuable information will surface.
Regarding the Norwegian records, I know that one particular poster had a print run on 10,000 of which
I own one. There was another that had a print run of 50,000 and yet these are harder to find and are
about 5x more expensive than the 10,000 print run poster is.
When I first started collecting there were posters that were considered rare which I know now is not
the case as I have seen them come onto the market either privately or via an auction in increasing
numbers. There are of course others that I am confident that only 1 or 2 exist and then there are
those which may not have survived in any number.
I have noticed that those countries in the East which were liberated / occupied by the Russians have
far fewer surviving posters which is not exactly a surprise to me.
Cheers.