ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes Susan Sontag's identification of the poster as a manifestation of modern culture is of particular interest. It explores the kind of wartime imagery that was developed in Germany during the the last two years of World War I with emphasis on the visual culture and context from which it emerged. In the midst of World War I, the central bank of the German Reich dramatically changed how war bonds were advertised in Germany by embracing posters. War bond posters posed a new challenge to Germany's graphic artists, specifically the development of motifs that reflected the sobriety of the times and evoked abstract concepts like patriotism, love of country and empathy. Sontag's notion of the modern public as the product of capitalism and circumscribed by a culture of visual primacy echoes Guy Debord and presages some of her own thoughts in On Photography.
