Advertising pillar

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Contemporary lithography for the first
Berlin advertising column

An advertising pillar is a billboard placed on the sidewalk of streets to which posters are stuck. It was invented by the Berlin printer Ernst Litfaß and first realized in 1854. The round column belongs to the field of outdoor advertising . A distinction is made between a general point (advertising column with several advertisers at the same time) and a full column (or whole position; advertising column with one advertiser).

Idea and development

The idea of ​​setting up poster pillars came about to counteract the wild poster advertising that was rampant at the time . Litfaß suggested to the chief of police in Berlin, Karl Ludwig von Hinkeldey , that they put up pillars everywhere in the city, on which people could hang their posters. After years of negotiations, Litfaß received the first approval for its "advertising pillars" on December 5, 1854. The city of Berlin gave him a monopoly on erecting his pillars, which was valid until 1865 .

The approval was linked to the condition that the latest news was also published on the pillars. In 1855 the first 100 advertising pillars were erected in Berlin and named advertising pillars in honor of the inventor . In 1865 another 50 columns were erected. Both the authorities and the advertisers quickly recognized the advantages of the new advertising medium: the state could censor the content beforehand. Advertisers could rest assured that their posters would really be visible for the entire rental period without being covered over.

Further use of the pillars

An advertising column in Vienna

During the war years 1870/71, the first war dispatches were published here. After the spread of telephony, the advertising pillars were given additional functions such as telephone cable distributors or transformer stations by using the interior of the hollow cylinder.

The advertising medium created in 1855 quickly spread to neighboring European countries and later throughout the world. Its construction was adapted to the respective building trends, and architects also designed their forms.

According to the Outdoor Advertising Association , there were around 51,000 advertising pillars in Germany at the end of 2005 . Advertising pillars are also still present in the Berlin cityscape. By 2019 there were exactly 2,548 pillars.

In Vienna there are numerous advertising pillars in the area of ​​the covered Vienna River in order to cover the stone spiral stairs leading there as an emergency exit from the depths and to protect them from unauthorized entry. The advertising pillars have a door that can only be opened with a key from the outside, but without a key from the inside. In the 1949 film The Third Man by Orson Welles , the protagonist Harry Lime escapes from Vienna's sewers through an advertising pillar.

Another use of the advertising pillars has been practiced in Nuremberg since 2015 : There are public toilets inside that can be used by anyone for a small fee.

Construction

The basic shape was designed with a diameter of about 1.4 m (circumference 3.60-4.30 m) and a height of 2.60-3.60 m as a hollow round column, whereby the posters could be any size and nobody anything had to stick around the corner or read. They were mostly made of sheet iron , later concrete and artificial stone were also used, with a wide base and a round hood, the edge of which was sometimes decorated. Instead of a hood, the column can also be closed with a straight plate on which further advertising material can then be placed.

Since the 1990s there have been pillars that open inward, called pillar . Terminals or telephones are installed in the interior. This street furniture continues the tradition of function as a direct service. In addition, versions are increasingly being used in which the actual advertising medium rotates around its own axis under a plexiglass and is illuminated. These are mainly used at traffic light crossings to attract even more attention, which in turn limits the awareness of road users.

The fate of the Berlin advertising pillars

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Senate of Berlin , which has been responsible for all of Berlin since the fall of the Berlin Wall, had concluded an operating contract for all advertising pillars with Wall AG , which was valid until the end of 2019, for which the latter was able to keep most of the advertising income, but for cleanliness and steadiness Functioning of the pillars was responsible. The operator change to a Stuttgart company led to the planning that all old pillars would be dismantled and replaced by around 1,500 new models, thicker and illuminated, some in other locations. In order to preserve the tradition, however, 50 historical advertising pillars should be placed under monument protection. Until June 2019, the examination by the State Monuments Office showed that 24 columns are worthy of protection, including 6 columns in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district , 5 columns in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district , 4 columns in the Mitte district and 3 columns each in Pankow and Reinickendorf , all of which are Components of larger monument areas. Probably the oldest surviving advertising pillar is on Hackescher Markt and was built around 1900. The youngest is a replica that was made in 1987 for the Nikolaiviertel in Mitte - both now remain.

Notation

125 years of advertising column , Berlin 1979

Even according to the new spelling rules, the word advertising column is spelled with ß , although it is preceded by a short vowel, because the first word component (Litfass) is a proper name and the spelling of names is not subject to the spelling rules.

Appreciations

As early as 1979, the Deutsche Bundespost Berlin honored the advertising column with a special postage stamp (see picture).

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the advertising column in 2005, another special stamp was issued with the motif of the advertising column.

There was also a poster campaign by the FAW (Fachverband Aussenwerbung e.V.).

On July 1, 2020, Google showed a doodle for the 165th anniversary of the public unveiling of the first 100 pillars in Berlin.

Picture gallery

In chronological order

literature

  • Steffen Damm: Ernst Litfaß and his legacy. A cultural history of the advertising column . Borstelmann & Siebenhaar, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-936962-22-7 .
  • Volker Ilgen: In the beginning there was the advertising column. Illustrated German advertising history . Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-89678-284-3 .
  • Sabine Reichwein: The advertising column. The 125-year history of street furniture from Berlin . Press and Information Office, Berlin 1980, ( Berliner Forum 1980, issue 5, ISSN  0523-0144 ).
  • Manfred Orlick: Berlin's advertising king . In Ossietzky , Volume 19, Issue 3/2016 , January 30, 2016, pp. 106/107, online at sopos.org.
  • Peter Payer: The pillars of Mr. Litfaß . In: Peter Payer: View of Vienna. Cultural and historical walks . Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7076-0228-9 .
  • Verena Mayer: The disappearance of advertising pillars from the cities. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , weekend edition from 23./24. March 2019, No. 70, p. 57

Web links

Wiktionary: Advertising column  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Advertising pillars  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Presentation of a general point on stroeer.de, accessed on July 9, 2019.
  2. ↑ Fachverband Außenwerbung with a brief description of the whole column , accessed on July 9, 2019.
  3. ↑ dpa-infocom GmbH: First Litfaßsäulen toiletries in Nuremberg. In: welt.de . November 25, 2015, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Thomas Loy: 2500 Berlin advertising pillars are dismantled. In: Der Tagesspiegel . January 30, 2019, accessed January 30, 2019 .
  5. ↑ The last 24 of their kind , in: Berliner Zeitung , July 9, 2019., p. 12.