JF Ptak Science Books Post 1857
The following ads appear in just three weekly issues of the LIFE-magazine-like Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig). Generally the ads are crowded onto the 15-inch-tall pages--sometimes as many as 15 to a page. Their design is remarkable, and artful, and effective. Plus, they're chock-a-block full of smaller design elements. For example, this one is one of my favorites for this period:
I actually used it for the "Open" sign for my store back in Georgetown so many years ago oh my brothers. That was before I discovered that it has a major problematic problem--it was designed by one of the greatest German designers of the time, Ludwig Hollwein, who also happened to be "a" (and then "the") principle designer for propaganda/posters for the National Socialists, and that from the early period (1933) right on through the end of the war.
There was more to worry about than simply selling Germany's oldest champagne, but of course many were immune to worry. When this ad ran for Kessler champagne, hyperinflation had struck very deeply into thew Weimar Republic, with the U.S. dollar trading at 1:27,000 Marks. Even in January 1919 inflation wasn't bad, with the dollar at 1:9 Marks (up from 1:5 in January 1918), but the simple tale of a long story is that the Weimar Republic kept printing money, and things got completely out of control, with the dollar trading in December of 1923 at 1:1.2 trillion Marks, which was a fertile seeding bed for National Socialism.
This one is actually quite large, about a half-page, trying to sell the idea of the Reichenberger Zeitung to both the privileged and the working classes (the newspaper, which began in 1860, would not survive the Nazis, going belly-up in 1935):
Well, I don't mean for this post to be very writer-y; I just wanted to post some of the images from these issues. There's really a lot to choose from, but these twenty or so will have to do for now:
This one is about an inch tall in the magazine:
Another tiny ad, this for a mechanical calculator:
And another tiny ad, about 3/4-inch:
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