Muetzenfabrik

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I need some frischluft, too many thoughts running through my tiny brain tonight!

Have a look at this articule FB. I'd love to know what is being said about us Brits!

I shall do. I am glad you think out loud and share it with us. After Jews, the next target in UM is the British, actually.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I need some frischluft, too many thoughts running through my tiny brain tonight!

Have a look at this articule FB. I'd love to know what is being said about us Brits!

The article is a few weeks before the war began, and comprises an analysis of the technique of British uniform adverts of such well known firms as Wilkinson sword, Gieves and Burberry's. The analysis of adverts was a major theme in UM, but in the German case, no large private public relations organizations existed to carry out such advertising. Such was not the case in the Anglo Saxon countries which invented modern advertising and public relations, as Glenn Beck reminds us nowadays. The article admires how the British carry off the advertisements. Apparently in Germany there were restrictions on depictions of soldiers in advertising, likely for ideological reasons. Restrictions existed on images of soldiers, granted their almost holy status and also the aversion to making a profit from state and party institutions. The author admires the British adverts, but then also make the jab that German advertising in surely good enough and one has no need to imitate foreigners. This is also typical of Nazi Germany, in which the outside world comes under scrutiny and even admiration, and then one reverts to the party line. Once the war starts, the UM articles are very anti British.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Interesting how he gets 11 pages. He must have been very well-connected. While his hats are ok, I do not put them in the top 10.

The article is not about Hoffmann's firm or its products at all, but about the symbolic meaning of the cap in a cosmos of uniforms in the Nazi state and this man's role in the commercial association of cap makers in the political economy of the Weimar Republic and especially in the case of the III. Reich. It is in the same vein as a series of articles in the years about 1936-1939 on this subject and highly revealing. Hoffmann was plainly a leading figure-- well before the advent of Hitler--as a business man of his era, and he was also a Nazi of an early date, as well. He is referred to as Pg Hoffmann, that is Parteigenosse Hoffmann. Parteigenosse as in NSDAP.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The image of Hoffman with cap in hand in the face of the UM journalist does make one wish that we could pose our questions to him directly, but he likely would not want to tell us, I think. In any case, all he can tell us is in these sources here that Ben is harvesting with fine results. An enterprising scholar in Berlin or elsewhere could likely find more, especially of the records of the association of cap makers and its interactions with the branches of the NSDAP or other parts of the state, to the extent that these records still exist. A good historian could well find them. Of course, a person who only cares about what the glamor cap collector thinks at a certain glamor militaria fete will find what I write here totally incomprehensible. Ben appended a book on the clothing industry in the III. Reich a while back, and it would have useful hints of where to begin such research.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The Nazis were obsessed with the effects of public relations, advertising, and propaganda and mass persuasion originating in Britain and the US. These phenomena had overwhelmed Germany in 1914-1918 and became a feature of national socialism in ways that are intriguing. These two books speak to this. One is a year book on German advertising, which is heavily influenced by US and British practice, and the other is a secret PhD dissertation of a propaganda ministry figure on the evolution of political posters from commercial art, and especially their role in the first world war.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

This book by Schockel I got in 1973 for little money and there is no trace of it in ZvAB. I guess it is rare. It has no "scull" in it, either.

Here is another Nazi era book on the history of propaganda which is quite excellent, published in the year 1938. I used to spend a lot of time in used book stores, attempting to reduce the pressure on my fore head via reducing the size of bill fold.

[BenVK]

The German advertising posters of the 1930's are amongst the best graphic design ever produced.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Very true. Thanks for the nice images. I could not agree more. As a child in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, I was seized of these things, which were still easily found. The means of printing these posters was also marvelous, too, as are the fabulous and brilliant colors.

We are still all children in an essential way, I guess. Why not? These posters were also for an urban, pedestrian and rail borne consumer, how different from what we have today with "apps" and the like. The paradigm of stone lithographs for the urban street is much more pleasing, I think.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

A Holters advert from the 1927 rank list of the Reichswehr. A modest thing, surely.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

The provision of uniforms to the 100,000 man army surely was not as lucrative a business as that of uniforms to the NSDAP ca. 1933 or the Wehrmacht and the party state formations in the years after 1933. Qui bono?

There are many uniform tailors in this source that are unremarked on on the ding bat website, where all knowledge purports to reside....

PS My photos are abysmal, but it is a miracle that I can make them and transfer them at all granted my age and weakened mind.

Warm thanks to Robert H for the image and more so for the book, itself. Such fulfills a yearning of mine since about 1975.