1913 | Schiess-Dusseldorf by Ludwig Hohlwein
About this video
A curator at the MoMA stores discusses Ludwig Hohlwein's 1913 poster for Schiess, a Düsseldorf maker of machine tools for German navy shipyards. Using the economical Plakatstil, Hohlwein merges sea and sky and shows a stealthy submarine, a U-boat type that would soon play a key role in the First World War.
You'll be able to
- explain what the Plakatstil poster style aimed to do.
- describe how the poster represents industrial and military technology.
- connect the U-boat in the poster to events of the First World War.
Key words
- Plakatstil
- A German 'poster style' that put the product first, using very few shapes and colours.
- Lithograph
- A print made by drawing on a stone or plate and transferring the ink to paper.
- Machine tools
- Machines used to cut and shape metal parts for other machines.
- U-boat
- A German submarine.
Transcript
- We're in the MoMA stores looking at the symbolic representation in 1913 of industrial progress and technology by Ludwig Hohlwein. Who was based in Munich and was at the forefront of a movement known as the Plakatstil, which gave prominence to the product being advertised using the most economic of means and colors.
You can see how he's really exploited the tonalities of the sea and sky to create this dramatic composition of interlocking shapes. It's a poster lithographically printed in Munich and it advertises the machine tools produced by Schiess. Schiess were the main supplier for the great government Navy shipyards in Germany.
And they were based in Dusseldorf, the industrial heartland. In this image, Hohlwein has concentrated on the mysterious and stealthy presence of a submarine in the background. And in the foreground, the machine tools that were produced by the client. With the simplest of means Hohlwein has communicated the merger of sky and sea and the stealthy power of this innovative U-boat which was to play a key role in the First World War.
In fact, only two years later, in 1915 it was a U-boat responsible for sinking the Lusitania, that directly provoked the engagement of the United States in the First World War. (gentle music)
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