Publisher: French Ministry of War; Graphic: Georges Scott; print: Imprimerie Henon, Paris; size: 119 x 79 cm; number: 1; multicoloured graphic: Two soldiers on a ship with blowing tricolour, in the background coast with palm trees (back of the poster described with counterpropaganda)

1. the history of the collection: The term "wall attacks" for the posters kept in this inventory is contemporary. It refers to the simple mounting: not like advertising posters on splendid advertising pillars, but on simple wall walls they were fastened visibly for everyone. The war situation requires simple use. Wall attacks were often used in the occupied territories. But even in the home country there was little room for such posters. The poor equipment of these posters is a consequence of this situation. The war situation allowed only simple, often newspaper-thin paper. As a rule, there was no graphic design, but the text poster predominates, on which at most the title (often the word "Bekanntmachung") is highlighted in large letters. Sometimes the paper is dyed with a signal colour, which can perhaps be interpreted as a preliminary stage of a graphic design. A more elaborate design for political posters only emerged during the First World War (Ursula Zeller. The Early Period of the Political Image Poster in Germany (1848-1918), Stuttgart 1987, especially Chapter 7). The advertising posters contained in this collection for the subscription of war loans offer charming examples of this. Such graphically designed and aesthetically "beautiful" posters, however, only make up a vanishing part of the collection of wall attacks. After all, it contains pieces by artists such as Hanns Anker, Lucian Bernhard, Alexander U. Cay, Fritz Erler, Louis Oppenheim and Egon Tschirch. However, most of the pieces kept in this collection are not such posters, but pure text posters without a graphic or even pictorial design. The collection of wall attacks was established in the army archive, Stuttgart branch, in the 1920s and continued for decades. Little is known about the motifs, the conception of the collection and the practical collecting activity from this period. A general interest in wall attacks can be established early on: some wall attacks were already reprinted in reduced size in brochures during the war (such booklets can be found in the HSTAS collection of publications) and even sold in the front area (cf. J 151 No. 1240). From the available material it can be concluded that the employees of the Army Archives in principle included every piece in their collection that they could get hold of. In comparison to today's collection concepts, a broad collection was intended. It was by no means restricted to German or even southwest German wall attacks. However, the existing collection sources were not always able to meet the high demands: often gaps remained which could only be taken into account with a few pieces or not at all. A lot can be said about the collection sources. It can be assumed that some of the wall stops were taken from files, which can be seen today in the perforations at the edges of the former multiple-folded piece. Other pieces contain official notes on the poster on the back or at the bottom. By the way, the group that carries a stamp "Landsturm Infanterie Bataillon Calw" or Leonberg is comparatively large. The fact that a third (523) of the 1622 Wall attacks of the western front came from the stage commandantur Roubaix can only be explained by the fact that a Württemberg regiment was stationed there, apparently like the two Landsturm infantry battalions mentioned a source for the collection of the army archive. Other stage commandantures for which such a connection was missing are accordingly sporadically considered. Stamps show that pieces were also taken from related institutions (in exchange?): namely from the Königlich Württembergischen Armeemuseum and from the Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig. A larger group of pieces has been extracted from the pamphlet collection of the Army Archives (now part of the Main State Archives J 150) and integrated into the collection of wall attacks. Over a certain period, the two collections held in the Army Archives overlapped. In addition - but to a lesser extent - wall stops were taken from Luck's collection and from estates (Hahn's estate, later also Haußmann's estate) and added to the collection. Some accesses from the Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg might be relatively young. The collection of wall attacks was added to the collection of the Main State Archives before 1974 from the holdings of the Army Archives. It was given the signature J 151. The background to the abolition of the quite sensible delimitation of the holdings between the collections of the Military Archives and the J holdings of the Main State Archives can no longer be discerned. Even before this relocation, the collection of wall attacks was arranged by the student Markus Braun in the army archive in 1954 and provisionally indexed by a twelve-page find book. The collection continued to receive further additions, especially from estates. The comprehensive conception of the collection failed in practice due to the limitations of the collection sources. Not all areas could be documented equally intensively. The collection covers the period from 1914 to 1948, including the post-war period of the Second World War. In quantitative terms, the focus is clearly on the First World War (2582 wall attacks totalling approx. 2700) and here again on wall attacks from the western front (1622 vs. 599 from the eastern front). These are mainly wall attacks by the (German) occupying power, to a lesser extent also those of Austrian provenance. Only a few wall attacks were made by the opponents (France and Russia) at that time. Another group are the pieces used in Germany (on the "home front") themselves. As provenances (publishers of the Wall attacks) both civilian (Generalgouvernement Belgium, French mayor's offices) and military authorities (army high commandos, stage inspections and commandant's offices) are represented, often combined with each other (at the level of stage commandant's offices and mayor's offices). In terms of content, these are often ordinances and communications from the crew to the local population. The wall attacks serve, for example, to announce war economic measures such as setting maximum prices, recording stocks that can be used for military purposes, announcing the punishment of locals or to incite desired behaviour among the population of the occupied area, such as observance of curfews, blackout measures or a ban on meetings. An interesting group are the wall attacks with "information" about the war situation, with which the resistance should be broken or at least discouraged. In the homeland, wall attacks served to call for recruits, to call for donations and to propaganda against the hostile powers, but also to strengthen national self-confidence, to advertise cultural events and to announce war economic measures. 2. processing of the stock: The merit of the work of the student Markus Braun of 1954 lay more in the order of the extensive collection than in its indexing. Braun limited the indexing to a group entry, for which the scheme "Regulations and notices: Etappenkommandantur XY, year, number of pieces" is typical. Wall attacks of the same kind were united to form a group and this group was described as generally as possible in the manner indicated. For reasons of time, it was probably not the intention to go into the contents of the individual pieces, which Braun, however, signed individually. Already the supplements to the finding aid book by later supplements tend in contrast to an individual indexing, thus to a description of each individual piece. Such a thorough indexing is finally standard for the poster collections begun in the 1970s in the Main State Archives (J 153, J 154 and J 154/5), which, unlike the Wall attacks, have no historical relevance. With the exception of minor changes, however, the order of the brown wall stops could essentially be maintained. The structure of his find book is therefore almost identical to that of the present one. Also, the old Braun signature runs in principle parallel with the present Numerus currens (which determines the place of storage). But since Braun started the counting with 1 again with each new larger group, a concordance of the signatures is attached to the find book. The individual development was therefore the aim of the reworking begun in October 1989. At the same time, it served to introduce the aspirants trained in the Main State Archives to the cataloguing of posters as an example for the work on collections. On the occasion of the reworking, better packaging was also provided. The wall stops were repackaged in acid-free DIN A 1 envelopes, also in order to avoid as far as possible the folds (especially cross folds) harmful to the very thin paper. Smaller cracks were also repaired. The new indexing was based on the MIDEPLAK (EDP) mask developed in cooperation with LAD in the summer of 1989 and a data sheet designed for this purpose. This data entry mask, which can be used under the MIDOSA program package, should not only be usable for wall stops, but should also be able to be used for IT data entry for all types of posters (advertising posters and political posters). The description of the wall stops is arranged according to the following scheme in the finding aid book: The order number in the upper left corner is only relevant for the order of the description and references from the index. For storage in the magazine and also for ordering the pieces, only the order number is used, which can be found at the end of the description of the individual unit. The title of the poster is treated as a quotation and is therefore enclosed in quotation marks. If necessary, additions are added for identification. Most of the titles are "regulation", "notice" and the like, and the editor then had to further specify the content in his own words. Several titles on a wall attack are quite conceivable. The title is reproduced in the original language, only in Slavic languages it is translated or transcribed. The runtime usually specifies the print or publication date. In the next line, the reason for the occurrence of the wall stop - as far as known - is given, but this is comparatively seldom the case with the wall stops. This is followed by information about the publisher, graphics, print, persons responsible in terms of press law, etc. The formal information includes the format of the poster and the number of pieces stored. The description of the visual representation takes place in a separate block. Since the stock at hand is mainly made up of text posters, an actual image description is omitted in over 90 percent of cases. In the case of pure text posters, a reference is made here to special features in the design (multiple columns, highlighting, colouring) or to the languages used (in extreme cases up to seven different ones). At the time of the creation of graphically designed political posters, such things can already be seen as elements of a graphic design. Before the final order signature, the provenances (here in the sense of collection sources) and the preliminary signatures must be indicated. Within the same category, the wall stops are usually arranged chronologically. Pieces that cannot be dated or only dated to the year appear at the end. As a rule, the date of a prescription is decisive for dating. In the case of wall attacks with ordinances of different dates, the last date closer to the publication date is decisive for the chronological classification. In the case of local meetings, the order is alphabetical. A folder with various French food ration cards from the Second World War was taken from the collection and incorporated into the relevant collection J 524, which has since been opened. The collection of wall attacks contains around 2,700 copies without counting the duplicates. The reworking of the wall attacks took place from autumn 1989 to summer 1993 under the direction of the undersigned within the framework of the introductory and intermediate practical courses of the candidates of the 26th, 27th, 28th and 30th training courses. The cooperating candidates were: Hartmut Obst, Andrea Rösler, Petra Schad, Jutta Stockhammer and Martina Wagner from 26., Bettina Heiß, Sybille Kraiss, Barbara Löslein, Jörg Martin, Armin Roether, Daniel Stihler, Martin Walter and Regina Witzmann from 27.Andrea Binz, Armin Braun, Daniela Deckwart, Astrid Groh, Katja Hoffmann and Nicole Röck from the 28th and Michael Bing, Dorothea Kiwitt, Michael Konrad, Manuela Nordmeyer, Annelie Jägersküpper and Christian Schlafner from the 30th training course. Neuenstein, September 1996Dr. Peter Schiffer In the spring of 1998, approximately 370 wall attacks from the time of the First World War, which were presumably delivered there in the 1950s, were transferred from the Heilbronn City Archives to the Main State Archives. The largest part of the collection is made up of wall attacks of the Roubaix stage commandant, the smaller part of those of the VI Army Command and stage inspections 2, 4, 5 and 6 and other editors. With the exception of the pieces kept in the Supplement to fonds J 151 under serial number 2717-2734, these are almost exclusively duplicates or other multiple copies of wall attacks that already exist in fonds J 151. In detail, the following status numbers have been increased by this delivery: 5, 16, 770-773, 775, 778, 780, 783, 788, 794, 872, 874, 875, 877, 879, 881, 883, 885, 887-893, 895-897, 909, 911, 913, 978-1306 (without serial numbers 980-984, 987-990, 993-998, 1001, 1003, 1004, 1006, 1009-1012, 1014, 1022, 1025, 1030, 1031, 1033, 1035, 1036, 1040, 1047, 1050, 1051, 1053, 1057, 1058, 1062-1070, 1075, 1076, 1078-1080, 1092, 1110, 1112, 1114, 1120, 1127, 1130, 1131, 1136, 1138, 1141, 1145, 1155, 1164, 1165, 1167, 1171, 1173, 1174, 1178, 1180, 1183, 1190-1193, 1196, 1203, 1207, 1209, 1213, 1216, 1218-1220, 1222, 1236, 1238, 1240, 1244, 1249, 1250, 1255-1258, 1267, 1272, 1300), 1336, 1477, 1479, 1480, 1602, 2312. May 1998 Eberhard Merk In 2002 Eberhard Merk revised and corrected the title listings and the overall index. In the summer of 2003, Wolf-Dieter Dorn's file of the distortion of the wall attacks, which was only available as a Word document, was converted into an Access database from which the online version of the finding aid book could be generated. The duplicated index with detailed index is still based on the Word document. September 2003 Regina Keyler