Polish poster art in post-war Germany

4. Political matters
 

As unanimous as the enthusiasm for Polish poster art was in Germany, the exhibitions were not always politically uncontroversial, certainly not from the point of view of the Bonn authorities and before the Warsaw Treaty of 1970. However, this depended less on the contents of the exhibition and the daily fluctuations in the atmosphere of Polish-West German rapprochement than on the organizers and their political colour.

A literal red rag for the federal authorities was the “German Society for Cultural and Economic Exchange with Poland” that was near to the KPD (Communist Party of Germany). Founded in Düsseldorf in 1950 as a West German offshoot of the East German Helmut-von-Gerlach Society,[24] it continued to develop its considerable activities and did everything in its power through events, exhibitions and its journal Jenseits der Oder (Beyond the Oder) to spread a positive image of Poland in the Federal Republic – much to the displeasure of many organisations, not least those people who had been expelled from Poland.[25] (Fig. 23)

Until the mid-1950s, it was practically the only organization that hosted exhibitions of Polish art in the Federal Republic of Germany, although it was often able to attract the cooperation of a wide variety of cultural institutions, such as in the provision of exhibition spaces. The society also organised the aforementioned touring exhibition of Polish posters in 1950. Whilst from a Polish point of view it was something like an unofficial West German friendship society, it was regarded by the Federal Republic of Germany as a communist camouflage organisation – not only keeping the expellee associations on their toes, but also the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Foreign Office, which had “most powerful objections” to the association.[26] Many of their Polish poster exhibitions in Germany had a correspondingly difficult status. In some cases, openings were disturbed by compatriot groups, and exhibitions were banned in advance by the police in order not to endanger law and order.