mersiowsky - 10-6-2016 at 08:47 AM
Lětopis Abstract 2011 1: Mirtschin, Maria: “Hanna from Raddusch” Advertises for Persil. Sorbian/Wendish Themes in Advertising up to the
Second World War.
Since the end of the 19th Century product advertising has used pictorial motifs from the Sorbian world. Sorbian national costume motifs have not only
been exploited in advertising by Sorbian businesses, but also by manufacturers of agricultural machinery in Bavaria, by international cigarette
companies, by the washing powder company Persil and by others. These motifs even played a prominent role in the political propaganda of National
Socialism. The author uses examples to examine how Sorbian motifs were effectively inserted into the images by increasingly separating the
presentation of the picture from the linguistic message for the purposes of advertising. As a result, they were stripped of their historical context
and ethnic content. The attractive, vivid nature of Sorbian national costume was the only element felt to have strong advertising value. Sorbian
motifs were of interest for National Socialist propaganda because the images from the everyday life of Sorbian villages were apparently able to convey
the ideal of a national community, which corresponded to the National Socialist world-view. That this could happen at the same time as the ban on all
Sorbian organisations and the suppression of Sorbian national aspirations was a result of the ambivalent nature of the images in the pictures, which
had been removed from their context.