Friday’s ad is for a German beer calendar, from 1953. From the late 1800s until the 1960s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. In addition to posters and other promotional materials, the German Brewers Association also produced calendars promoting their beer beginning in 1951. These are the monthly pages from the 1953 calendar, and each of the illustrations is by Austrian artist Rudolf Hermann. He was apparently a somewhat controversial figure, primarily because one of his best-known works was a poster for the Degenerate Art Exhibition that the Nazi’s put on to vilify modern art and artists, but he was also persecuted by the Nazis, too, so it’s unclear what his involvement might have been. This page is for June 1953, and at the top, it reads.
Ist die schwere Schicht geschafft,
gibt ein Bier Dir Neue Kraft…!
That translates roughly, very roughly I suspect, as “Is the heavy shift done,
a beer gives you new strength …!” At the bottom of the calendar is printed “Bier, Wer schafft, braucht Kraft!” or “Bier, Who creates, needs strength!”
