Featured Poster of the Week
"Long live the friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic!"
On October 7, 1949, a communist government formed in the Eastern portion of Germany. Its leadership vowed to be politically separate and socially distinct from the Western section of the nation known as the Federal Republic. The new nation in the East was the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) or, German Democratic Republic (GDR). Based on a hyper-Socialistic economy, all private enterprise was abolished. Nearly every business or economic initiative was either nationalized or controlled by the government in some way. A police state also developed making East German citizens subject to mass surveillance. By the early 1960s, easterners began to flee west and due to the population drain (in August 1961) the East German government erected a barbed wire and concrete wall they called an “antifascist bulwark” between East and West Berlin. This wall eventually extended beyond Berlin paralleling the entire border of East Germany. While it closed the border to the west, the wall locked-in East German citizens by keeping them away from their European neighbors as well as from the rest of the world. Inside East Germany the border was patrolled by armed guard-- death awaited those living in the east who dared to circumvent the wall. After the wall came down (in 1989) East Germany collapsed and reunification with the Federal Republic of Germany became a reality in August 1990.
About The Collection
Poster Plakat is a private collection of Soviet and Eastern Bloc political ephemera spanning 1916 to 1991. The collection contains over 1,000 original posters, poster maquettes and political leaflets from windowpane-sized posters up to large, multi-panel broadsides. Numerous artists are represented such as Gustav Klutsis, Victor Deni, Nikolai Dolgorukov, Vladimir Stenberg, the Kukryniksy, Viktor Koretsky, and hundreds more. All posters are linen backed and ready for display.
If you are interested in using images from the Collection or exhibiting posters from it, please visit the Contact Us page for more information. You can also email info@posterplakat.com and include the name of your organization, the name of the contact person and provide your phone number. In addition, please provide a general description of the exhibit you are considering or the poster you would like to use.