The book jacket is rarely treated as a primary document. In interwar Austria it was precisely that: a charged surface on which photography and typography were enlisted to draw readers into political struggle before a single page was turned. *Buchumschlag! Fotomontagen im politischen Kampf der 1930er-Jahre in Österreich* examines how books, pamphlets and thin booklets functioned as “small posters,” using photomontage to mobilize, polarize and make ideological conflict legible at a glance.
The publication traces a period that escalated after the burning of the Palace of Justice in 1927. On one side, fragments of reality, aggressively assembled, registered the desperation of workers and the growing ranks of the unemployed after the First World War; on the other, images of untroubled harmony summoned a return to a traditional worldview. The jacket became an argument, a recruiting tool and an emotional instrument, and the montage of photograph and text a medium for sharpening an already irreconcilable political landscape.
Edited by Hanna Schneck, Arne Reimer and Monika Faber, the book presents archival photographs by multiple or anonymous photographers. A foldout cover and further foldouts reproduce historical complete jacket compositions, so that the original printed object, not just its imagery, remains readable. SCHLEBRÜGGE.EDITOR issued the volume in March 2025 in a Swiss binding paperback, with 240 pages and numerous color and black-and-white illustrations. The German-language edition accompanies the exhibition at Photoinstitut Bonartes in Vienna; the exhibition also has presentations in Salzburg and Leipzig. It received the gold medal of the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 25|26 in the category Bildband Fotogeschichte.
For a collector of photobooks and photographic history, the book’s importance lies in what it restores to view: the designed cover as a site of political speech, where avant-garde montage conventions met mass persuasion. Its essays, visual apparatus and facsimile elements make it a considered reference on a subject that sits between photography, graphic design and the history of the interwar period.
