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Scheine des Todes
Certificates of death, issued to order, in the year the currency stopped meaning anything.
What
A German placard of 1923 designed by Theo Matejko, the Austrian illustrator whose reportage-influenced drawing dominated Weimar film advertising in the middle twenties.
Why
The title alone dates it: 1923 was the hyperinflation year, and the German screen filled with pictures about paper that kills — forged documents, worthless notes, contracts with fatal small print. The fantastic and the financial were briefly the same genre.
Notice
Matejko draws like a newspaper artist under deadline — quick, gestural, and far looser than the flat poster styles around him.
“The year Germany learned what a piece of paper could do.”
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
Provenance
- Film
- Scheine des Todes (1923)
- Country / studio
- Germany
- Designer
- Theo Matejko
- Format
- One-sheet (27 × 41 in.)
- Poster published
- German lithographed film placard, 1923
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons
Conservation note
Print produced from an AI-enhanced upscale (≈2.4×) of the surviving archival scan (original 470×700px). The upscale raises resolution only — the design is unaltered, and the paper’s folds and age are the artifact’s own.
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (poster published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year, never the film’s. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
More from Theo Matejko
From The Haunted Screen
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The Double Bill
Two one-sheets, hung as a pair — a double feature for your wall, at a pairing price of $270.00 for the two. Build one from any two one-sheets in the gallery.
Pair it in the gallery →A house of the Provenance family