Weapon book cover! Photography, cover and propaganda in the 1930s

What a shop window is to a store, a book cover is to a book. Whether image, typography, color scheme, or texture: the cover piques the reader's curiosity about the book's contents without revealing too much. With the exhibition "Book Cover as a Weapon!", the German Museum of Books and Writing, looking specifically at the 1930s, explores how political discourses and ideological battles are reflected on book covers in socio-politically charged times – to what extent the book cover becomes a weapon.

Photography plays a particularly important role in this: The hype surrounding illustrated magazines in the 1920s transformed photography into a mass medium, significantly contributing to the era's so-called "iconic turn." Since printed materials could be mass-produced cheaply, it became possible to use photographic images for persuasion. However, it was only with the introduction of universal suffrage after the First World War that political parties developed strategies for using photography as a propaganda tool.

The exhibition focuses on printed works from this period, with an emphasis on Austrian publications whose publishers were also active in Germany, particularly in Leipzig, and which have received little research attention to date. Using approximately 100 examples, the exhibition showcases the experimental approach to cover design using photography and typography in the 1930s. In six chapters, the show demonstrates how public opinion was influenced by the cover and how new photographic reproduction techniques opened up innovative avenues for book designers in their work with visual materials.