Major exhibition and scholarly loans from

The William Gillespie Collection from 2007  to the

present day.

 

The act of acquiring and archiving film posters and related film ephemera should never be an end to itself.  Of course the thrill of the hunt for film treasures and their successful integration into this Collection cannot be gainsaid.  There is nothing to compare to the unearthing of something one has been searching for over decades and then winning it at public auction or by purchase. Many untold hours are needed to survey possible listings and many hours spent without results.  But The William Gillespie Collection firmly believes that our posters should be made available to scholars and relevant film institutions or museums and not hidden away in a cellar or in a storage facility. Over fifteen years ago we set up this website to make our holdings better known and accessible.

We have to date loaned original posters  and/or rare film objects to the Haus der Geschichte in Stuttgart, to the Potsdam Filmmuseum, made high quality scans then reproduced at the  the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C;  and provided at no cost many images to scholars and students as documented below. We have also had both black and white and full colour poster images reproduced in a number of film books, journals and in Ph.D theses. We have provided many German film DVDs significant bonus materials in the form of press-book images, posters, other promtional materials; and have also written essays about some of those films which were included on the DVDs as narrated or titled "slide shows."  All at no cost to the companies producing those DVDs and Blu Rays -- Morisel Verlag, Potsdam Filmmuseum,  and International Historic Films. 

Our loans/cooperation/collaboration have included:

From 14 December 2007 to 9 September 2008, the two original Belgian and Italian posters of the propaganda film Jud Süß (1941, Germany) were on display at the special exhibit entitled "Jud Süß - Propagandafilm im NS-Staat" at the Haus der Geschichte, Baden-Württemburg, Stuttgart, Germany, along with other related film items borrowed from the Gillespie Collection. The 152-page catalogue of this important exhibition was published by Das Haus der Geschichte (ISBN 978-3-933726-24-7) and all film posters and materials loaned by this Collection were reproduced in the catalogue.

 

In 2007 the Macmillan book entitled CINEMA AND THE SWASTIKA, co-authored by renowned film historians Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch, used the Belgian poster as illustration of the use of German propaganda films in Occupied Belguim in WWII. Original poster images from this website are also, by arrangement with the F.W. Murnau Stiftung, in Wiesbaden, Germany, held on their own website.

 

From January 2009 to October 2011 a major exhibition on Nazi propaganda, STATE OF DECEPTION: THE POWER OF NAZI PROPAGANDA was presented by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.  We provided, at the Museum's request, high resolution JPEGs of some of our original film posters for SA Mann Brand, Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, and  Ohm Krüger so those posters could be put on Litfass advertising columns in a facsimile set representing a Berlin street scene during WWII. The Litfass column can be seen at the right with two of those posters.

The exhibition catalogue was published in 2009 and our original German film poster ( 'Muster 1' ) for the anti-British film Ohm Krüger was reproduced in the book STATE OF DECEPTION: THE POWER OF NAZI PROPAGANDA, W.W.Norton & Company, New York, N.Y. by permission of the Gillespie Collection. The poster was reproduced in full colour on the first page of the book chapter entitled 'Feature Films as Propaganda.' 

In late 2010, the book UFA IN FARBE - Technik, Politik und Starkult zwischen 1936 und 1945, Collection Rolf Heyne, München, by authors Friedemann Beyer, Gert Koshofer and Michael Krüger, reproduced a number of items from this Collection, including three different countries' posters for MÜNCHHAUSEN, and one each for DIE GOLDENE STADT and for DIE FRAU MEINE TRÄUME.

In October 2011, a biography on film director Herbert Selpin entitled DER FALL SELPIN by Friedemann Beyer (Collection Rolf Heyne) appeared with contributions from this Collection.

In August 2012, the long–anticipated biography on actor Emil Jannings by Frank Noack reprinted and credited from this Collection one of the two German posters for Ohm Krüger.

In November, 2013, the Agfacolor film reference book by Dirk Alt, DIE FARBFILM MARSCHIERT! Frühe Farbfilmverfahren und NS–Propaganda 1933–1945, München, 2013, used both colour and B&W images from the Collection unobtainable elsewhere.

In early 2014, the new Felix Moeller documentary on National Socialist film, Verbotene Film, borrowed images of  Jud Süß posters and other related film materials from this Collection. The documentary was released in October 2014, although the posters were in the end, not shown in the final version of the film.

In June, 2014, a film conference in Moscow entitled "Soviet studios at war, 1939-1949" took place. Dr. Ralf Forster, whose research on the Zentralfilmgesellschaft Ost (ZFO) and its production companies, such as Riga-Film and Ukraine-Film (see Ostland Film on this website) used the  Collection's very rare Riga poster for Das Sündige Dorf  in his conference presentation.  

In July 2014 Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld published the book THE PLACE OF POLITICS IN GERMAN FILM,  with a chapter on Karl Ritter's Capriccio (1937) using information from the Collection, drawing on the personal film clipping Capriccio album of Karl Ritter and other materials. (Chapter 4, by Valerie Weinstein, "Third Reich Film Comedy as a Place of Politics: Masculinity, Marriage, and Mayhem in Karl Ritter's Capriccio," pp. 85–104).

The English translation of Frank Noack's pioneering 2000 work,  Veit Harlan  – "Des Teufels Regisseur, "  published by The University Press of Kentucky as Veit Harlan – The Life and Works of a Nazi Filmmaker in 2016, includes quotations from our 2nd edition Karl Ritter book concerning the actor ( and  Luftwaffe pilot)  Hannes Stelzer, who appeared in Harlan's Der Herrscher film (1937).

 

The Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television (HJFR&T), Issue 2 of 2016 (Vol. 36) has an article by Tobias Hochscherf and Roel Vande Winkel entitled "Third Reich Cinema and Film Theory."  In the acknowledgements, we are thanked  "for kindly offering access to hard to find sources."  No problem! or kindl

A just released 'Bildband' book published in November 2017 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Uƒa film studio by noted film historian Friedemann Beyer contains 15  posters from the Collection, all of which are reproduced in full–colour, as well as 4 B&W or colour images/photos. The Karl Ritter 2nd edition book by William Gillespie is listed in the book's Bibliography, as well.   

 

 

We provided seven original Münchhausen  film posters from across 1943 Europe to The Potsdam Filmmuseum in Germany in 2017/18 as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the famous Uƒa film studios at Babelsberg. The exhibition opened in December 2017 and ran for three months. The posters were subsequently shown in the exhibition when it was presented in August–October 2018 in Wiesbaden, at the Filmhaus of the F.W. Murnau Foundation.

Our Library received  from a Holocaust organisation in Rome their exhibition catalogue which reproduced some of our Collection's anti–Semitic poster images of German and Italian films, such as Harlan's Jud Süß and Waschnecks's Die Rothschilds in 2017, as well as the Mjölnir Sieg im Westen Gaufilmstelle poster, and the German poster for the Italian Fascist film on the 'Black shirts." The  192 page full–colour exhibition catalogue was published with the title LA RAZZA NEMICA – La propaganda antisemita nazista e fascista by Gangemi Editore International, Roma. 

We were contacted in late 2017 by a Berlin DVD production company releasing DIFU dubbed German versions of Italian films from the 1938–1944 period, seeking film poster images etc from our expanded DIFU collection, which we happily provided.

Posters and promotional materials have been provided to International Historic Films in Chicago, for two new or forthcoming DVD releases of Karl Ritter's WWI epic Unternehmen Michael  as well as for the Hans Zöberlin Freikorps 'Munich Red Republic' film, Um das Menchenrecht.  Further upcoming IHF film titles in 2019/2020 have also been supported but cannot be disclosed at this time. See the last panel on the bottom of this page for updates on our DVD collaborations.

The Berlin Kinemathek / Berlin Film Museum on–line catalogue of pre–1945 film periodicals links our Index of DER DEUTSCHE FILM Zeitschrift found on this website, for the benefit of researchers.

Two academic researchers at universities in Belgium and Germany are working on an article on the Deutsche Filmakademie, Babelsberg, and we have supplied them with a 34 page scan of a rare publication in our Library which they could not find elsewhere, and did not know existed until we made contact, in July 2017.

Dr. Hans Traub (1901–1943) was the pioneering film researcher, scholar and archivist in the late Weimar and the Third Reich years when film was still a young medium. He published a number of seminal works during this time -- including those found in our Library -- and his untimely death from blood poisoning in December 1943 meant a Dictionary of Film remained unfinished and unpublished. Interestingly, the Foreword for the book was written by none other than Prof. Karl Ritter. The manuscript, incomplete, was kept by his family and in 2007 found it's way into the collection of the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. The manuscript has just been published as Wörterbuch des Films; by Hans Traub, Editors Rainer Rother und Rolf Aurich; Neofelis Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2017; 247 pages. The William Gillespie book on Karl Ritter is cited in the book, and Gillespie, who corresponded with Herr Aurich about Traub, is one of the individuals thanked by the Editors. As always, we were delighted to provide any information possible.

 

An April 2019 book  Antisemitism in Film Comedy in Nazi Germany  uses film stills and posters from our Collection. Published by Indiana University Press, the author is Prof. Valerie Weinstein.

 

 

 

POTSDAM FILMMUSEUM April 2019 – On loan from our Collection are 47 original German film posters, from Germany, Finland, Belgium, France and Sweden between the years of 1932 and 1954.

 

In the scholarly journal,  Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 2019 Vol. 55, No. 2, an article  The Uniform in the Closet:
Mädchen in Uniform in Nazi Germany by Valerie Weinstein, University of Cincinnati concluded with:

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to William Gillespie, The Gillespie Collection, Sydney, Australia, for sharing the Kamera and Kurbel cinema programs.....

 

At the Twenty-Seventh Biennial Conference of  IAFM&H (International Association for Media and History) titled  "Power and the Media"  which ran from 16-18 July 2019 at Northumbria University, Newcastle, in the U.K; Professors  Ciara Chambers  (University College, Cork) and Tobias Hochscherf (Kiel University of Applied Sciences) presented a paper  "Anti- British and anti-semitic propaganda: Third Reich Films and Ireland."  Our Collection provided images of the posters and some press-book material on the three films in question: Leinen aus Irland, Der Fuchs von Glenarvon, and Mein Leben für Irland. 

 

 

In the new August 2019 book by Dr. Rainer Rother, Zeitbilder. Filme des Nationalsozialismus, our book The Making of The Crew of the Dora, is cited in the Chapter on "Contemporary Films under wartime conditions, " which covers Karl Ritter's WWII military films such as Stukas and Besatzung Dora.

 

 

 

 

In January 2020, we received a request for a poster of the Emo film Wien 1910 to be published in the forthcoming book Art, Exhibition and Erasure in Nazi Vienna. (Routledge Publishers). Update 9/2023: the book has been published and the poster shown at right has been reproduced in B&W on page 156 where the film is being  discussed. We also are listed in relevant footnotes pertaining to this chapter:

 

 

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In April 2020 we scanned and sent to the Berlin Filmmuseum / Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek's Head Schriftgut Librarian the complete year issues for 1943 and 1944 of the rare Ufa Feldpost monthly newsletter.  It was a publication for all Ufa staff and artists who were serving in the German armed forces, so that they would have news from the studio on forth–coming productions, and news of colleagues also serving on war fronts. We found that neither the Kinemathek's Library, nor that of the Bundesarchiv–Filmarchiv had 90% of these issues in their respective collections. The 1944 issues were particularly important insofar as they became the only Ufa publications after late 1943/early 1944 which provided news on their new productions. Their other publications had ceased due to wartime paper shortages.  Our book on Karl Ritter's  banned Besatzung Dora Luftwaffe film cites Feldpost news on the film months after all other Ufa publications had stopped reporting on it, for example. We are, as always, happy to see that items in the Collection are able to be shared and professionally exploited. The idea of hoarding rare film treasures in a basement or room somewhere and to keep them secret we feel is a selfish betrayal of the value of collecting and preserving such rarities.  We had provided the same Ufa Feldpost scans to the German Federal Archives' Filmarchiv at an earlier time.

 

In May 2020 we assisted a Ph.D student in Athens with images of our behind–the–scenes photographs and documentation of the Rene Deltgen WWII German military propaganda film Fronttheater.  The student has been delighted with the materials which we have made available, writing "The information you are giving me is very valuable to my thesis and I appreciate your trust to my intentions. " and: "The photos are remarkable. Your contribution will be of great help for my thesis."  After we also subsequently sent a full–page interview with Fronttheater's director found in the Film-Kurier Tageszeitung newspaper of 8 June 1942, the student responded:  "Thank you for this material. I really appreciate it. This interview is a great contribution to the film documentation and analysis that I try to provide in my thesis."

 

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 We have been thanked by author Rolf Giesen for proofing his latest film history book, which was just published in English.  We were happy to assist.

 

 

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Nine of our poster and advertising images have appeared across six chapters of the book  Ufa international – Ein deutscher Filmkonzern mit globalen Ambitionen, which was published in early 2021 by edition text+ kritik, München. We were thanked by the Editors in the Acknowledgement section for our ‘quick and uncomplicated’ assistance in providing images. Our biography on Karl Ritter is also cited in footnotes in the Chapter in the book devoted to "Die Ufa in Japan and China."

 

 

 

We have also been asked for poster images for a forthcoming palgrave book on the topic of  Film Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption in the Second World War, also  to appear in early 2021.

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We recently acquired an original press photo taken inside the Esplanade-Cinema in Hamburg  in 1949 to do with the trial of flm director Veit Harlan on charges his film Jud Süß was a 'crime against humanity.' It was in this cinema where the court screened both Harlan's Jud Süß as well as Hippler's Der ewige Jude films for the judges and trial participants and observers. The almost forgotten photo is under consideration to be the book cover illustration of a new English–language book on Veit Harlan currently being written. The author of the book has been in touch with us as to this possibility, once the photo was made known to him.

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In August 2020 we were asked by a producr of a forthcoming documentary for RTL Luxembourg  television to provide poster images of the 1933 Uƒa  WWI submarine film Morgenrot for their use, to which we happily agreed. 

 

A new book to be published in August 2021 by palgrave has the fascinating title  Film Professionals in Nazi-Occupied Europe : Mediation between the National-Socialist Cultural “New Order” and Local Structures.  The book analyses the film industries and cinema cultures of Nazi-occupied countries (1939-1945) from the point of view of individuals: local captains of industry, cinema managers, those working for film studios and officials authorized to navigate film policy. The case studies presented in this book cover the territories of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the Soviet Union.

The Editors have chosen five images of posters and documents from our Collection that will be used in this book!

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An Italian book on the Carmine Gallone 1943 film Harlem by Luca Martera has been published in April 2021 and we provided one film lobby card image for the book from the Max Kimmich film Germanin; which also uses Negroes.

According to the author, "This is the full story of the most fascist, racist, anti-American, and anti-Semitic Italian full feature film- and for all of these reasons - also the most censored. Harlem is the first boxing propaganda movie ever made, by order of the Italian Fascist regime to portray Americans as being corrupt and controlled by Jews and Blacks. The 1943 film was directed by Carmine Gallone and shot in a replica of New York City, cleverly reproduced at Cinecittà studios (the hub of Italian cinema, on the outskirts of Rome). "  The post–war re-release of the film cut a massive 37 minutes out, which is the heavily butchered version on YouTube.

 

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In CineGraph Babelsberg's journal FILMBLATT Heft 75 / Frühjahr 2021, our two original posters for the film Philharmoniker are reproduced in an article by Emily Drefus; and our website's pages on Ostland-Film/ZFO are cited in a footnote in another article on the Occupied Ukraine 1942–1943 by Günther Adge.

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On 15 July 2021 we received this communication from a journalist.(EMPHASIS IS OUR OWN):

Hey,

I am a German journalist writing about military movies in history, and one of my examples happened to be Hans Bertram's "Feuertaufe" (1940).

On your website, I found a post on that movie, which is here:
https://ipv6.germanfilms.net/poster-gallery/feuertaufe1/

The newspaper with the articles You show a photo of is obviously hard to find, I was unable to get it from any other archive or shop in Germany - or, so far - around the world. However, the Information in it is truly important for my work.

So, if You actually still own this newspaper, I would like to ask You if it is possible to get photos or copies of the other pages so I am able to quote it for my work. Would You guys be so kind and assist me?

With Greetings from Germany,

We have scanned this 4-page Tobis Filmkunst newspaper for him and sent it on its way.  German Film Dot Net's friendly assistance to scholars and journalists at work.  We often hear from such people who simply cannot find original materials we  have in our Collection, and are happy to oblige them.

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In May 2022 we presented the three books constituting our "Ritter Trilogy" to the staff of the Deutsches Filminstitut Filmmusem collection  (DFF) held at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt/Main. This means that our books will be available to film students and anyone interested in borrowing these titles from the DNB through their national library lending program.

We also donated a copy of our Legion Condor book on the lost Ritter film to the library of the Bundeswehr's Militarische Historischesmusuem in Dresden.

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May 2022: The next issue of the prestigious academic Journal of Contemporary History has a 24-page  article on Hans Steinhoff's Ohm Krüger entitled "A Hard Sell - The Nazi  Film Ohme Krüger in Wartime France, " co-authored by Prof. Bert Bowles and Prof. Roel Vande Winkel. The William Gillespie Collection provided the critical DVD transfer of an old VHS cassette we had acquired twenty years ago of the original French-language dubbed version of the film, which includes in the opening credits a very brief  Boer War history lesson for the French audiences of 1942. (The French versions floating around on the Internet these days are not this version, but the German version with modern French subtitles, without that Boer War insertion, or any of the other differences the French audience viewed ).  

We are able to offer you a link to this article here.  The issue had a very kind acknowledgment of the role that this Collection played in the writing of the article:

 

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The Filmarchiv Austria in Vienna is publishing a new series of books on film music (»Filmmusik in historisch-kritischen Editionen«) and their most recent title is Gustav Ucicky's Der Postmeister. We have the original German poster for the film, as well as the press book and some film stills in our Collection. We provided Filmarchiv Austria with a high-resolution image of the poster which they have used in the book.

 

 

 

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One of our two original German posters for the propaganda film Wien 1910 has been reproduced in full colour in the academic journal  Austrian History Yearbook 2022, published by Cambridge University Press.

 

 

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An Argentine historian who lives in Germany has approached us to provide material on Karl Ritter's post–1945 film career in Argentina, and any information we have on these productions. We have been able to send him newspaper clippings and some primary source material to assist in his efforts. He successfully traveled to Argentina and was able to secure scans of original Karl Ritter diary pages for  1952–1953, thanks to our introduction and advise.

 

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We have provided two poster images to Dr. Ralf Forster to use in his presentation  about the wartime Ostland- Film-Woche newsreels at a November 2023 seminar in Görlitz.

 

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In early 2024, a coffee–table type book with 1,024 images on 424 pages was published in Germany, called Der Deutsche Film – 1895 bis Heute  [The German Film – 1895 until Today] by the Welt-kulturerbe Völklinger Hütte,  Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2024. Despite many archives and sources being used to provide the images, the poster of Hitlerjunge Quzex  was requested from The William Gillespie Collection. We were happy to agree.

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A  fascinating new book in German about the love affair between Dr. Joseph Goebbels and the Czech actress Lida Baarova was published in August 2024 by morisel verlag in Munich. The author is the noted film historian and author Friedemann Beyer.  As Baarova starred in two early Karl Ritter films   (Patrioten, Verräter) our Collection was able to provide many photographs and scans of related ephemera which in the end were not used; and William Gillespie's biography of Ritter was  also quoted in the book.

 

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We have received the following enquiry:

History Today magazine is including in its March issue a short article on the German/Japanese film Die Totter des Samurai. We would like to illustrate the piece with a poster or still from the film, and note that you have some. We would be very grateful if you could kindly provide us with high resolution image files and permission to reproduce them. History Today has an English Language print run of 20,000, and is also published digitally for subscribers via the website and app.

We gave provided the requested images for the Fanck film and a copy of the published magazine will be sent to us for our archives. Always happy to help!

 

In late March 2025, a documentalist for a French documentary about the relationship between cinema and the populations annexed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War contacted us and we provided many films stills, posters and other film ephemera to assist  with their film project. The person who contacted us said "your collection is very interesting and unique, and I'd be very happy to make the most of it.."  

 

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Commercial DVDs which have used poster images and film promotional materials from the Collection.

German releases of DER CHORAL VON LEUTHEN (DVD) and MORGENROT (BluRay and DVD) employ posters and original promotional materials from the Collection. In January, 2015 arte /absolut medien released a DVD of the silent and sound versions of  the Louis Ralph 1926 – 1934 film KREUZER EMDEN, and used both of our posters from the Collection in the accompanying booklet and one poster served as the DVD cover art. American DVD releases of GPU, DER GROßE KÖNIG, ICH KLAGE AN, BISMARCK, MEIN LEBEN FÜR IRLAND, DIII88, STOßTRUPP 1917, OHM KRÜGER, LEINEN AUS IRLAND, JUD SÜß, WUNSCHKONZERT, WUNDER DES FLIEGENS, HITLERJUNGE QUEX, HANS WESTMAR, STUKAS, BESATZUNG DORA, ÜBER ALLES IN DER WELT, POUR LE MÉRITE, U–BOOTE–WESTWÄRTS! and KADETTEN, IM KAMPF GEGEN DEN WELTFEIND,  the Freikorps film FOR THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND (UM DAS MENSCHENRECHT), URLAUB AUF EHRENWORT,  the new high definition re-mastered HITLERJUNGE QUEX  as well as another forthcoming Karl Ritter DVD release, and four other propaganda film titles, all draw on this Collection's materials.

New IHF  2019 DVD releases drawing on material from this Collection included KOPF HOCH, JOHANNES! and the DeLuxe remastered high definition documentary FEUERTAUFE. Forthcoming releases using our Collection posters and publicity materials include JUNGE ADLER; HÄNDE HOCH!, FRIESENNOT/DORF IM ROTEN STURM.  We also provided materials for the two Imperial Japan films and two Franco-Falangist feature films released in November 2020 by IHF. 

 

In Autumn 2021 we provided bonus materials to the IHF release of the Werner Krauss  Napoleon film Hundert Tage, and also for the two other new DVD releases of Ucicky's infamous  Heimkehr  and Karl Ritter's classic WWI home front masterpiece,  Furlough on Word of Honour/Urlaub auf Ehrenwort. In 2022,  Venus on Trial  and  in early 2023, Diesel. In  April 2024 the first commercial release of the Hans Albers propaganda film, Carl Peters,  for which we provided the film poster, Werberatschlag, lobby cards and other marketing materials found in the disc's Bonus Materials.

 

 

 

Over the past few years we have also provided scans of cinema owner's guides, pressbooks and posters to the Filmclub Edition in Germany,  which is releasing German dubbed versions of Italian films made prior to 1944.  These are the DIFU films, about which we have a lot of original materials, found on this website. The films range from Italian historical costume dramas to criminal thrillers, to war films. A sample page from their latest catalogue is shown below.  The DVD cover slick for Genina's Alcazar shown is that of our DIFU poster for the film found in our Poster Gallery: