Poster Stamps Printed by the Deutscher Schutz- und Trutzbund, Hamburg, before 1922

Source Description

The collection of Hamburg’s Research Centre for Contemporary History  Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte contains numerous examples of antisemitic poster stamps printed from 1919 to 1922 by the large organization German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation (DSTB)  Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund . They were an expression of a new strategy of street agitation utilizing mass communication media such as stamps, broadsheets, and flyers. One of their creators was (DSTB) chief executive Alfred Roth. In the first six months of 1920 alone, (DSTB) local chapters and their supporters distributed more than two million flyers nationwide and pasted 4.4 million poster stamps. These were produced in Hamburg and were mostly rectangular in shape (their usual size was 5 x 3-4 cm). They attracted attention by their use of color and graphic elements. The poster stamps appeared – often pasted anonymously – on street lamps, advertising columns, at train stations or on shop windows as well as stuck onto envelopes. Their broad spectrum of anti-Jewish messages appealed to different target groups within German society. The beige-colored poster stamp quotes a polemical remark by reformer Martin Luther in order to reach the Protestant milieu. The stamp reading “A fortune of 60 billion…” attacks the workers’ parties for supposedly protecting Jewish bankers from nationalization. The red stamp reading “Jews and agents of Jewry [Judentzer]…” was meant to warn the national bourgeoisie against voting for democratic and socialist parties while the blue stamp employs a militant phrase emphasizing the dichotomy of “Germanness” and Judaism in order to warn of the international enemy already in the country.
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Recommended Citation

Poster Stamps Printed by the Deutscher Schutz- und Trutzbund, Hamburg, before 1922 (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-138.en.v1> [December 06, 2024].