Postcard of the Day No. 47, Adolf Salberg

Today we have an attractive advertising postcard to publicise the Adolf Salberg chain of shops selling leather and fancy goods to the early 20th. century German consumer. The jewel-like complexity of the display is a fine example of the lost art of window-dressing. Not for the first time, a melancholy note can be detected in the background. In the late 1930s, as the Nazi’s economic war against Germany’s Jews gathered pace, the process of Aryanisation intensified to the point where in 1938-39 Jews were legally compelled to hand over their businesses in return for derisory sums to pure-born members of the master-race. The Salberg business is only one of many hundreds listed by the University of Hamburg that succumbed to Aryanisation in 1938-39.