On political cabaret and the dangers of not voting: historical election posters in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek
“The best place for a politician,” runs a famous line by the German comedian Loriot, “is on an election poster. On a poster he is bearable, silent and easy to get rid of.” And even if today’s posters are no longer the primary tool of election campaigners, a delve through the DDB’s collection of historical posters can throw up some interesting items. From its beginnings in 16th-century Holland during the country’s war with Spain to its move into the pictorial medium for the purposes of advertising, the poster came of age as a significant medium of communication towards the end of the 19th century. With industrialisation and the growth of advertising the poster became the tool of advertising, electioneering and propaganda and an omnipresent feature in public spaces during the last century.
Election posters not only reveal much about the political events, culture and aesthetics of a particular period but also speak volumes about the emotions of that period. The SPD posters from 1932 speak a plain language, with the party bent on defending the democratic Weimar Republic by showing what Germany would look like if the NSDAP were to succeed with its Third Reich. One poster depicted Germany as a bloody graveyard; in another the bloody-handed skeleton of an SA man symbolises terror and murder. Little did people know how prophetic these posters would prove to be.
On the back of repressive censure laws in the German states between 1848 and 1918 came the heyday of the political poster at the end of the First World War, when it provided the pictorial backdrop to the November Revolution and the collapse of the German empire. With censure gone and television not yet on the scene as a competitor the poster became the most popular form of political communication in the interwar period – a status that, with the advent of the ‘Volksempfänger’ radio set in the thirties and the advance of television in the fifties, it would never regain.
The essential elements of an effective election poster are clearly defined. The viewer must be able to grasp the poster’s content and form without effort, it must be conspicuous to passers-by, and the information conveyed must not be so concise that the viewer gets the wrong message. To understand what is being conveyed the viewer had to be versed in the politics of that particular period.
The Federal elections of 1957 (see posters above) were a triumph for the CDU/CSU and their Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. The grouping achieved an absolute majority for the first – and, to date, only – time in its history. Its slogans during the early years of the Federal Republic created a climate of fear at the prospect of a change of government and reminded the electorate of the Soviet Union’s intervention in Hungary in 1956. The right-wing ‘Pan-German Bloc BHE / League of Expellees and the Disenfranchised’ used the same slogans as the CDU (‘Everything hangs on this’) but failed to clear the 5% hurdle. As a political party it hung on only for four more years. The Ring politischer Jugend, on the other hand, sought to warn people of the dangers of not voting. Not casting one’s vote was a step in the wrong direction, it insisted.
An examination of the historical election posters in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek also reveals material used by parties that existed only for a short period of time. One example is the ‘Aktion Demokratischer Fortschritt’, a left-wing political party that was founded in 1968 and dissolved - or transformed into a movement - in 1969 after the Bundestag elections. The party mustered only 0.6% of the votes in an election that saw the CDU/CSU relegated to the opposition and the SPD in a coalition with the FDP and providing the Chancellor in the form of Willy Brandt.
The Bundestag elections in 1972 were unusual in that they were the first elections in the history of the young Federal Republic to be brought forward. The Chancellor, Willy Brandt, had asked for a vote of confidence, paving the way for new elections. All parties campaigned energetically. Two years before the legal voting age had been reduced from 21 to 18 and there was much vying for the votes of the new cohort. Many celebrities and ordinary citizens were also stating plainly which party they were rooting for. On election day there was a record 91.1 percent turnout, with the SPD winning its greatest victory ever and taking over as the strongest group in Parliament, outstripping the CDU/CSU and the FDP. In the eyes of the young Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP) the party landscape was akin to a political cabaret and it chose to run a slogan in the style of a film poster, with the title ‘Life Story – the Might-Watchmen’. The SPD opted for a child motif and a bouquet of flowers. ‘Welcome, Willy Brandt’ is printed on the banner, which a boy is holding up along with a bouquet of yellow flowers. And it helped the SPD to victory.
‘But it may also be that the examples of German posters from recent decades show that the story of political posters will continue for as long as public debates in the street remain an indispensable component of political culture in a democratic and pluralistic society.’ (Kai Artinger)
Sources:
‘Das politische Plakat – Einige Bemerkungen zur Funktion und Geschichte’, Kai Artinger (PDF)
‘Das Wahlplakat als zeitgeschichtliche Quelle’, Demokratiezentrum Wien