Shatter the enemy of the world! Nazi Party election poster with a man smashing a financial building with a battering ram
Extent and Medium
overall: Height: 19.000 inches (48.26 cm) | Width: 13.000 inches (33.02 cm)
Creator(s)
- Streiter-Verlag (Publisher)
Archival History
The poster was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1990.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection
Scope and Content
Political poster promoting the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler for the German election in Saxony on May 20, 1928. The poster is dominated by the image of a muscular worker demolishing the Saxon parliament building, which bears the label “International High Finance.” Though the theme of a worker destroying a government building was often used utilized by Communist groups, Nazi political groups also employed it to win the votes of the working class. During the 1920s, both Left-and-Right-wing groups in Germany opposed parliamentary rule. The destruction of a building associated with government and finance implied that Nazi leaders would be able to solve the many social problems plaguing Germany at the time. The nation was deep in the throes of the Great Depression, with six million unemployed. This economic distress contributed to a rise in the popularity of the Nazi Party who along with the Communist Party and the Social Democrats, were the most popular political parties in Germany. The Nazis supported economic nationalism and distrusted international capital, preferring domestic production with the elimination of foreign competition.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
No restrictions on use
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
German political poster printed on light brown paper on a white linen backing depicting a giant, shirtless man in black pants held up by a belt with a swastika buckle. He is raising up a vertical, cylindrical, red battering ram decorated with a canted, black swastika in a white circle, as though ready to smash it down on an extravagant columned white building below him. The building’s roof is smashed in and pieces of rubble are flying through the air as spectators look on with their hands raised. On the top right, there are three lines of large, red text in Sütterlin font. At the bottom are two lines of large red text in a block font. The linen backer is creased on the back.
front, bottom left on linen, handwritten, pencil : 16/J front, bottom right on linen, handwritten, pencil : pII 30 front bottom right, handwritten, pencil : 360
Corporate Bodies
- Germany. Reichstag
Subjects
- Political campaigns--Germany--History--20th century.
- Saxony (Germany)
- Zwickau (Germany)
- Germany--Politics and government--20th century--Posters.
- Political elections--Germany.
- Voting--Germany--History--20th century.
Genre
- Posters
- Political posters.
- Object