Das Gold dem Vaterland ...

German First World War poster asking people to give gold for defence of the Fatherland. The poster depicts a woman holding out a golden pendent with her left hand and a jewellery box under her right arm. German poster design during the First World War was intended to be simple, graphic and visually arresting. In German posters, words and images were integrated and the essense of communication conveyed through powerful shapes and patterns. They often also extolled an overt nationalism, with the preference of the authorities being for wordy slogans which encouraged people to contribute to the war economy. Lucien Bernhard (1883-1972) was born Emil Kahn and later became known as Lucien Bernhard. He was a designer and worked in Berlin from 1905-1923 and then in America from 1923 until his death in 1972. Essentially self-taught, he received some instruction at the Akademie der Kunst in Munich. In 1905 he won a poster design competition for Priester matches, launching his career. Bernhardwas a master of lettering, and his typefaces were produced commercially. The majority of his First World War posters, for war loans and charities, were purely typographical. His 1913 Franktur typeface, a revival of the Gothic script of the Middle Ages, asserted a defiantly German identity. In 1920 Bernhard was appointed First Professor of Poster Design at the Akademie der Kunst in Berlin. He left after three years for New York, where he designed further typefaces and advertising posters and developed corporate identity programmes. After the Second World War Bernhard moved away from advertising and concentrated on painting.