Adolf Hitler: Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers

Cigarette albums offer a different model for ways in which words and photographs could come together in a single volume. Albums like this one were sold with printed text and blank spaces for photographs; album owners would send in coupons that came with their packets of cigarettes to receive photographs to fill the blank spaces.

This example celebrates Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party and Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and thereby demonstrates explicitly how photographs could be used to disseminate political ideologies. The album offers a counterpoint to publications such as Life, which began publication in 1936 and was informed by very different ideologies. The album also provides further context for John Heartfield’s photomontages, which drew on and remixed mass media images such as these photographs to critique the Nazi regime. 

Another German cigarette album housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections commemorates the 1936 Olympics.