Rhein-Main Universitäten (RMU)

In the first century of brand advertising (from the German Empire through the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era to the early Federal Republic), collectible advertising cards were one of the most influential media for generating world knowledge in Germany: adults and children collected the free gifts from the consumer goods industry: colonial or racial ideas, concepts of history, nature, technology, or homeland – everything was collected, sorted, glued, and carefully preserved tens of millions of times over.

Goethe University is the only institution to hold a comprehensive, excellently preserved collection (2,500 albums) of this ephemeral mass medium, which is of fundamental importance for historical and cultural research.