Konrad Dussel
Pictures for German communists: The newspaper supplement Der Rote Stern (The Red Star) in the Weimar Republic

Traditionally, German newspapers exclusively comprised text. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, a new type of competition emerged: magazines utilized lots of pictures, predominantly photos. The newspapers had to react, and thus the newspaper supplement was born. more…

Vike Martina Plock
Klaus Mann’s Decision: The unfinished story of a modernist magazine

This paper analyses the history and reception of Klaus Mann’s short-lived, modernist magazine Decision: A Review of Free Culture. Published for the first time in New York in January 1941 against the backdrop of an escalating war, the magazine was designed as a forum for international literature and soon attracted contributions from many modernist writers more…

Antonella Pelizzari
Modernity and distraction in Fascist Italy: Photography in 1930s Rizzoli illustrated periodicals

Between 1927 and 1938, at the height of Italian Fascism and stifling nationalism, the publishing impresario Angelo Rizzoli in Milan launched a new range of illustrated weeklies that thrived on a modern and transnational visual culture shaped by rotogravure. more…