European Film Star Postcards: Collection: Tatiana

17 May 2013

Collection: Tatiana

I was quite overwhelmed last week when the mail brought me a big envelope from the States. Inside were 39 film star postcards by Film-Foto-Verlag, the German publisher that was very active just during World War II. They were sent to me as a gift by Tatiana, who earlier has sent me scans of postcards of her relative Tamara Desni. Thank you so much, Tatiana!

Heinz Rühmann. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3852/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.

Gisela Uhlen. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3922/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.

Margot Hielscher. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3854/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.

Glamorous And Perfectly Lit
In this post I show you twelve of Tatiana's Film-Foto-Verlag postcards. During the war years, these were distributed all over occupied Europe and thousands of people collected them. We have many of them in our collection. Of course at the time, you could not find any postcards of British or American actors here. And postcards of Jewish stars were also not longer available. So, it's a kind of a guilty pleasure to watch these Film-Foto-Verlag postcards, but still a real pleasure. The photos by studios like Star-Foto-Atelier, Baumann and Quick are glamorous and perfectly lit. Look how Mady Rahl lits her cigarette or how Iván Petrovich watches at us from the shadow under his hat...

Mady Rahl. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 212, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.

Irene von Meyendorff. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 201, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Baumann.

Iván Petrovich. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 192, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick.

Ross And Film-Foto-Verlag
Film-Foto-Verlag was a continuation of the famous Ross Verlag. This publishing house had been a Jewish run business. Heinrich Ross, the founder of Ross Verlag, had been forced out of business by the Nazi's, and his company had been taken over by non-Jews. Around 1937, Ross Verlag was a subsidiary of film company Tobis. During the war, all film companies in Germany were owned by the government. The Nazis changed the name of the firm to Film Foto Verlag after the US entered the war in 1941. The cards stopped being published around 1944.

Marika Rökk. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 221. Photo: Ufa.

Hans Söhnker. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. K 1434. Photo: Foto Binz, Berlin.

Elfie Mayerhofer. German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 217, 1941-1944. Photo: Star-Foto-Atelier / Tobis.

A or G or K
Film-Foto-Verlag produced different series, as you can see in this post. Regular were the A cards, mostly with a white border around the photos (sometimes with a small border like at the Olga Tschechova postcard below). This series ran from A 1000/1 to A 4096/1. Another group of cards were known as the G Series. These seemed to be strictly German performers. They measured 4 1/8 by 5 7/8. Another series were knows as the K cards (like the Hans Söhnker one above). They were advertised as 'Kunstblätter'(art sheets). These are not postcards, but larger size photo portraits, similar to studio publicity photos. They came in sizes 20 x 25 cm, 20 X 30 cm, 18 x 24 cm and 15 x 20 cm. They also came in black and white, or the sepia brown as well as gloss finish. The K photos are not as common as the other cards, probably because they were more expensive to purchase.