THE JULIUS PAUL COLLECTION OF POSTERS
The Julius Paul collection was formed between 1895-1937 by Paul, a Hungarian-
born, Jewish, Viennese businessman. As a distributor of cigarette rolling papers, he
belonged to a profession renowned for its graphic advertising campaigns.
Presumably it was his work in the rolling paper industry where he was exposed to
the great posters produced by companies such as Job, Abadie and Le Nil which
began his nearly four decade-long pursuit as poster collector.
Paul was a meticulous man and a passionate collector,
amassing over 6300 posters. He kept careful track
of each piece in his collection, writing an index
card with the inventory number, title and
artist’s name and even hand writing the
artist names on the individual posters. He
stored his collection in a custom-built
oak storage cabinet.
His was not a “working” collection,
meaning that the contents were
not loaned out to institutions or
used by students or scholars as
research. Rather, Paul’s intention
from the outset was for the
collection to be appreciated but
not used commercially: a collector’s
collection.
When Paul died two months before the takeover of Austria by the Nazis in
March of 1938, the collection was left to his nephew who was forced to flee the
country in 1939. In that same year, the collection appeared for sale in the printed
catalogue of the Viennese bookseller V.A. Heck. But between the nephew’s
departure from Austria and the Heck sale, the collection had shrunk nearly by
half, to 3600 posters, and was being offered for sale along with its wooden
storage cabinet and a reference library that included a complete run of Hans
Sachs’ illustrious poster journal Das Plakat. It is unknown whether Paul’s nephew
“voluntarily” turned over the collection to Heck on consignment in order to fund
the escape and atonement taxes levied on Jews, or if he simply abandoned the
collection, which was then picked up by agents of the SS or government.
What is known is that documents from V.A. Heck record the ultimate sale to
Vienna’s Albertina Museum at a very low price. In fact, more was paid for the
wooden storage unit than for the posters themselves. The letter sent finalizing the
transaction was signed by the bookseller under the salutation “Heil Hitler.”
