Typography and nationalism: The past and modernism under Nazi rule

In 1941, the Nazi regime revoked the long-established convention of typesetting German texts in Fraktur styles.1 This study examines the significance of the messages conveyed by letterforms in Nazi propaganda and the extent to which the regime put into practice its professed typographic policies. Taking into account different audiences and channels, it focuses on books by the Ahnenerbe institute controlled by Heinrich Himmler, the women’s magazine NS-Frauen-Warte and the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. Fraktur styles seem to have functioned as the main letterforms of the blood and soil ideology, but another strand of Nazi typography departed from Fraktur and probably translated the importance of the Oera Linda book and the Codex Aesinas in the image of a supposedly ‘Aryan’ past. Meanwhile, the Nazi propaganda incorporated forms and norms that it appropriated from modernist typography, a topic implicitly raised in the dispute between Max Bill and Jan Tschichold in 1946. Typography functioned as an instrument for exclusion, racial discrimination and gender stereotyping and to mark the boundaries of the ‘Aryan’ community, challenging the notion of print-language as intrinsically inclusive expressed in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.

Mather work incentive posters and the rhetoric of scientific management in the 1920s

The Charles Mather work incentive posters of the 1920s promoted the philosophy of scientific management that just ten years earlier the US Congress deemed reductionist and dehumanizing. In a time where the rise of middle management and the growing faith in the powers of capitalism were omnipresent, the posters and rhetoric of scientific management made great sense to those in control of big business. Mather’s 78 work posters hung in offices and factories all over the country, and describe what it meant to be efficient, productive and a good member of business society in the 1920s. As a medium, Mather’s posters served to create and reinforce workplace practices of managers and leaders that would advance 1920s corporation and society. As propaganda, the posters appealed to worker’s attitudes, behaviours, emotions and sense of social belonging. This study evaluates the rhetoric and themes of Mather’s 71 posters in the 1926‐27 catalogue (the most popular year for the posters). It finds that in a propaganda-like manner, the posters encourage and discourage workplace behaviours that support management at the expense of workers’ thoughts and self-protection in the form of unionism. Further, as Mather worked to create posters that would influence the workplace ecology, his posters dissolved into the environment. The rhetoric used within the posters became adopted by organization leaders and employees, thus facilitating the linguistic transition of 1920s corporate society. An evaluation of these posters lends insight into the history of motivational posters and signs within organizational culture. Today, newer motivational posters are hung in offices around the world, with similar intentions to those of Mather. Because Mather’s posters signify the beginning of motivational posters in the modern western organization, studying the originals could help describe transitions in corporate culture.

The shift to national Catholicism and the Falange in the Second World War: The case of Garbancito de la Mancha (1945)

This article analyses the political undercurrents running through the first European hand-drawn animated feature-length film, which was made in Barcelona in 1945. It was titled Garbancito de la Mancha and will be analysed at discursive, iconic and visual levels. The goal is to establish whether political events during the Second World War years as well as the early years (1939‐45) of the Franco dictatorship are reflected in the film. After the Spanish Civil War (1936‐39), two main political parties struggled to control the nation. One of them was the Spanish version of fascism (the Falange); the other was the Catholic Party (National-Catholicism). The end of the Second World War was to mark a showdown between the two parties for political hegemony. The outcome set the tone for the regime until its demise in 1975 with Franco’s death. Given that the film was made by key political figures of the period, the ideology of the film will be revealed by visualizing the myths and values for the period spanning from 1939 to 1951 when Spain pursued autarky (self-sufficiency).

İroni ve Gerilim: İkinci Dünya Savaşı Yıllarında İstanbul’da ve Ankara’da Savaş Algısı (Irony and Tension: Perception of War in Istanbul and Ankara during the Second World War Years), Sinan Niyazioğlu1 (2016)

Review of: İroni ve Gerilim: İkinci Dünya Savaşı Yıllarında İstanbul’da ve Ankara’da Savaş Algısı (Irony and Tension: Perception of War in Istanbul and Ankara during the Second World War Years), Sinan Niyazioğlu (2016)Ankara, Turkey: Vekam, 312 pp.,ISBN 978-6-05938-806-1, p/bk, €8

Representing and commoning the refugee crisis: The ‘assemblage’ of the Lesvos Migration Atlas

This article uses a critical lens to examine the various representations of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in Lesvos, Greece through both the system of the hotspot regime and the performative acts of commoning, defined as the creation of the commons. It also proposes a process of commoning by the creation of an ‘assemblage’ of the Lesvos Migration Atlas. In this manner, the Atlas as an outcome of the research is itself a representation that embraces theory, narratives, practices, and acts; a visual and symbolic tool that provides space for photographic material, videos, artworks, (re)mappings, everyday stories, and reflective texts. At the same time, it is a collective process of capturing, writing and representing, open to new material and scripts – thus a product in a process of becoming. Overall, the online and interactive Lesvos Migration Atlas can well be approached as an ‘assemblage’ that respects the mobility and contingency of the various crises, representations and acts of commoning. In the Atlas, the refugee crisis, the hotspot regime and the common spaces that have been created are brought together through the emergence and critical confrontation of the multiple representations of Lesvos.

Understanding Hezbollah symbolism through symbolic convergence theory

This article applies symbolic convergence theory (SCT) to the type of symbolism used by Hezbollah, a Shia terrorist organization. By and large, SCT posits that sharing group fantasies contributes to symbolic convergence. The success of symbolic convergence hinges on three important concepts: symbolic cue, fantasy type and saga. An example of a symbolic cue is Hezbollah’s yellow-and-green logo that symbolizes global militancy against infidels. In regards to the organization’s fantasy types, eight of them were identified (e.g. Al-Quds Day, definition of enemies and individual self-sacrifice). Apropos of Hezbollah’s sagas, two figureheads, Ruhollah Khomeini (the Grand Ayatollah in Iran) and Hassan Nasrallah (the current Hezbollah leader), have become idols of worship by hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah members and millions of Shia Muslims. An important conclusion is that events can be more important for their symbolism than their very happening or existence. Hence, through symbolism, Hezbollah can strike a chord within its followers so as to produce significant change in the world.

Revealing the invisible: The virus is looking at you

At the core of the various messages that have been sent out about the Coronavirus is how to deal with an invisible threat. Revealing the invisible is however an ancient issue, one that goes back thousands of years and reoccurs throughout human history. This article is an exploration of the complex interrelationship between several long-standing visual tropes that over historical time have emerged from various cultures in response to a need to communicate invisible forces. Beginning with reflections on the poster for the International Hygiene Exhibition of 1911 held in Dresden, linking in images of an Egyptian sun god, via extramission theory and thoughts about the first drawings done through a handheld, lens-focused microscope by Robert Hooke, a series of links and interconnections are made that explore how the invisible has been represented and how the invisible virus can be read as a type of ‘dark star’ or anti-sun. Christian traditions of the use of unnatural colour to signify both invisible power and demonic possession and the way the Coronavirus has itself been depicted are compared to historical visual tropes such as the aureola and the mandorla as used in the Greek Orthodox Church to depict sacred moments that transcend time and space. From Buddhist and Christian uses of halos via images of sea-mines, a complex series of interconnections are revealed that are now being tapped into by Government-sanctioned information leaflets relating to the Coronavirus outbreak.