Engelberg_Magazin_No_15

Schmetterlingsplakat von Herbert Matter aus dem Jahre 1928.

Werbeplakat für Schick`s Grand Hotel, wahrschein- lich für das Jahr 1955.

Butterf ly poster by Her- bert Matter, 1928

Advertising poster for Schick’s Grand Hotel, around 1955

Old tourism posters are a mine of information and inspiration, and some are even works of art. Once upon a time, they were the principal form of advertising for tourist resorts, and they document the values, aspirations and design techniques of the age in which they were made. They are like snapshots of an era, giving an impression of the way people lived and thought. The f irst tourism posters designed for Engelberg a lmost a lways featured the loca l at trac tions. From the 1920s, designers took a more abstrac t approach and sought to capture emotions and zeitgeist in person is seen adver tising holidays in Engel- berg, and the emotiona l density of the poster is still striking today. In Mat ter’s collages, the landscape becomes a sur face for projec ting va lues like f reedom, adventure and hea lth. The posters cleverly combine interchangeable snip- pets of the mountain scener y with pic tures of people, lines and typography to create a new and entirely modern look. Mat ter’s works for Engelberg are prime examples of modernist ar t. In his posters of the 1930s, the A lpine scener y is a simple backdrop that stands for the A lps in genera l rather than a specif ic loca l feature. The f igure in the foreground is much more impor- tant – a young woman, tanned and smiling, snowf lakes fa lling upon her face. In fac t, Mat- ter’s interest in close-ups began much earlier. His f irst macro image was probably the red f lower and white but ter f ly that are the centra l motifs of a famous poster f rom 1928. The cable car and the Hahnen are on ly vaguely indicated in the background. A lthough other designers their posters. One of the best examples of this is Herber t Mat ter’s iconic poster of the woman with the Nor- wegian glove. This was the f irst poster where an ac tua l

soon emu lated this emotive use of close-ups in the 1930s and 40s, the qua lity of Mat ter’s work remained unmatched. In the 1950s, there was a return to simple landscapes for Engelberg tourism posters, with neat script and white f rames. A poster for Schick ’s Grand Hotel f rom around 1955 is a good example of this return to a more conser vative style of adver tising. A whole era spanning the Great Depression and the Second World War lies between the exu- berant poster with the but ter f ly and the more sedate one adver tising the Grand Hotel. Those

milestones in histor y had a ver y negative impac t on the tourism industr y. The years of crisis and the at tempts to dea l with it changed the nature of tourism in the resor t, its adver tising and

Old tourism posters are a mine of information and inspiration; some are even works of art.

the v illage itself. The poster f rom 1955 bears witness to the changes that lef t their mark on Engelberg. The snow and ice on the poster cover up the remains of the demolished Kuransta lt, which fell v ic tim to the crisis a long with the Hotel Sonnenberg. Both establishments were demolished in 1943 on the recommendation of a federa l study into the redevelopment of hotels and resor ts. The grounds of the Kurpark and the Titlispark, shown in the 1955 poster, were still in good condition. These were to become the centra l focus of new development ac tiv ities that have charac terised the v il- lage ever since. The but ter f ly poster of 1928 and the hotel poster of 1955 thus marked two turning points: a time just before the years of crisis, and the onset of the post-war boom. The three posters shown here ef fec tively mark the beginning, the apex and the end of modern- ism in the marketing histor y of Engelberg.

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blick zurück | looking back

blick zurück | looking back