Kolonial-Ausstellung, Gruppe XXIII, Berliner Gewerbe-Ausstellung 1896
Colour poster for the colonial section of the 1896 Berlin trade exhibition: a barefoot, turbaned African man in a wrap holds a spear in one hand and a black-white-red imperial flag over his shoulder in the other, before a gold disc and the words 'Kolonial-Ausstellung'. The tell: the empire's flag is carried by a colonial subject shown in ethnographic costume, so the national symbol and the exhibited people are fused in a single figure.
- Date
- 1896
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Berliner Gewerbe-Ausstellung 1896, colonial exhibition (Group XXIII), German Empire; printed by Walther Peck, Berlin (designer not named on the sheet)
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- German Empire
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Mixed
- Regime
- German Empire
- Leader
- Wilhelm II
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Empire and colonialism, Race and ethnicity
- Event
- Berlin Trade Exhibition 1896
- Techniques
- Transfer
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (reproducing a Deutsches Historisches Museum poster), retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (published Berlin 1896, before 1931; Commons PD, CC Public Domain Mark)
Walther Peck (printer), Berlin, 1896; Deutsches Historisches Museum copy, via Wikimedia Commons.
Text on the object
Kolonial= Ausstellung Gruppe XXIII Berliner Gewerbe=Ausstellung 1896. [distributor label, foot:] Vertrieben durch Paul Canstrom's Verlag, Hamburg [remainder illegible] Druck v. Walther Peck Berlin S.
Colonial exhibition Group XXIII Berlin Trade Exhibition 1896. [label:] Distributed by Paul Canstrom's publishing house, Hamburg Printed by Walther Peck, Berlin S.
The distributor label at the foot is small and only partly legible in the 960 px image; the publisher's surname is read with medium confidence. Translation is a machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader.
