Reading for the Reich

This set of advertisements to promote reading was offered to booksellers by the Bund Reichsdeutscher Buchhändler. They're taken from Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel, February 1936, and I wish I'd taken better photos.

"Your books are your best friends"

"Benefit from the experience of others, read technical literature!"

"Masters: let your apprentices read books!"

"Books help you through life"

"Use your free time, read a book"

Here's that last one as part of a display:

And because no part of 1930s Germany was all sweetness and light, one poster is a quote from Hitler about how he benefitted from extensive reading: " Still, nice tablecloth they've got in that window huh?

Do machines eat people?

"Or are they freeing them from slavery? Walther Kiaulehn's hard-hitting book "The Iron Angel" provides a chronicle of inventions from the antique to the modern age, a moving history of the spirit which created the machines, a cultural history of human work and power, a thoroughly optimistic philosophy of technology."

Book advertisement from "Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel", January 1936.