The posters’ production ceased abruptly owing to a growing lack of primary resources for printing - especially paper - as the War progressed and conditions deteriorated.

They were distributed “in editions of 125,000 on a weekly-basis” in Nazi Germany and Occupied Territories from March 1936 to January 1943. These Nazi propaganda posters are part of a series known as “Parole der Woche” (“Slogan of the Week”). Figure 1- Pile of Sackler Posters when they arrived in the Bodleian Libraries Conservation Workshop The conditions in which the posters were housed at the Taylorian was never particularly satisfactory and, in 2016, the decision was taken to transfer them to the Sackler Library, which has a fully-functional climate-controlled environment (plus a more suitable space to accommodate them). These posters were originally housed at the Taylor Institution Library (‘Taylorian’), Oxford’s centre for the study of Modern European Languages, where it is thought they were acquired from Hermann Georg Fiedler (1862–1945), Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature (1907-1937). Clare asked us for advice on how to preserve a collection of twenty propaganda posters produced by and for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) - or Nazi Party - dating from the year 1939, and in too fragmented a condition to consider their display or use for study, teaching and research purposes.

In 2018, the Bodleian Libraries Conservation and Collection Care Department received a conservation request from Clare Hills-Nova, Librarian in Charge, Sackler Library (Oxford’s principal library for research and study in the fields of art, architecture and archaeology). Reproduced by kind permission of the authors. This blog post was originally published by the Bodleian Conservation & Collection Care department in July 2019.

Good housekeeping magazine archive