'Germany Awakens' - card album marking the rise of the Nazi Party to power. Complete album. Berlin, 1933

'Germany Awakens' - card album marking the rise of the Nazi Party to power. Complete album. Berlin, 1933

Deutschland erwacht - Germany Awakens. An album of cards documenting the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s until Hitler's seizure of power in 1933. Published by Cigaretten-Bilderdienst Hamburg-Bahrenfeld. The album has 225 pasted cards - color and black-and-white photographs documenting the growing power of the party in its early years, accompanied by heroic explanations of how Hitler "rehabilitated" Germany after World War I and brought the Nazi Party to power. At the end of the album is a large panoramic photograph (110 cm) of a party rally held at the Nazi party's convention grounds in Nuremberg in 1933. Hardcover with the original dust jacket featuring a photograph of a German SA parade, all complete.

The album reviews the rise of the Nazi Party (the NSDAP - Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) from its beginnings in 1920 when it had only about 3,000 members, through the 1920s - the years in which Hitler established his position as a skilled orator before an ever-growing audience, until the Nazi Party seized power in 1933. The album opens with an article praising Adolf Hitler, stating that "millions look upon him with admiration and hope", and describes milestones in Hitler's life from his childhood.

The album contains dramatic and heroic descriptions written by the Nazi Party's propaganda apparatus, which employed various attention-grabbing elements, focusing both on the rise of the Führer's power and the favorable response of the German public to the Nazi Party and all it represented - flags, mass street parades, symbols, bands, folk singing, the Hitler Youth, and other means to unite the members. The album had a great influence especially on German youth who were exposed to it in their early teenage years, and later served the idea themselves as SS soldiers during World War II.

The album and its photographs were edited by Heinrich Hoffmann - the official photographer of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler's personal photographer, and cards to complete it were distributed serially in cigarette packs.

The album also appears in the permanent exhibition 'Photography during the Holocaust' at the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem.

Literature: 'Flashes of Memory' - Photography during the Holocaust, published by Yad Vashem 2018.

152 p. 32 cm, complete album. 225 cards - various sizes (some large across a half page) + large panoramic photograph of the 1933 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg - 110x31 cm. Hardcover with gilt lettering and original dust jacket. Minor tears to bottom of dust jacket (repaired).