Krüger

On some vintage postcards from my collection has been shot. Small bullet holes are the evidence. These are all postcards of beautiful women: starlets, actresses, singers, pin-ups. They were published in the late 1950s and early 1960s by a German company called Krüger.


Brigitte Bardot at the beach of Saint-Tropez, 1957. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/142. Photo: Ufa.


Claudia Cardinale. German postcard by Krüger / Ufa. Sent by mail in the Netherlands in 1967. Photo: Fried Agency.


Elsa Martinelli. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/255.


Mara Lane. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/58.


Rosanna Schiaffino. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/59.

Shooting Galleries

These postcards were all used in shooting galleries at fairs in the Netherlands. If you hit the postcard, you could take it home. That's why many Dutch men, who were boys during the 1950s and 1960s, still have their postcards of Brigitte Bardot or Jayne Mansfield with a little hole in it.

The publisher who produced these colourful postcards was a company in Hamburg, Arthur F. Krüger, Papierwarenfabrik (paper factory). Krüger must have produced thousands of postcards.
The subjects were mostly topographical, views from cities and villages, both in Germany and abroad.

Krüger also published dozens of postcards of film stars and pin-ups. For the pictures, they often worked with such glamour photographers as the American Bernard of Hollywood, the German Georg Michalke and the Frenchmen Gerard Decaux and Sam Lévin. The results are dazzling.


Vivi Bach. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/274. Photo: Bernard of Hollywood.


Marisa Mell. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/349. Photo: Bernard of Hollywood.


Sophia Loren. German postcard printed by Krüger, no. 902/304. Photo: Georg Michalke. Michalke made this picture for Loren's 42nd Italian film, La donna del fiume/The Woman of the River (Mario Soldati, 1955).


Dany Saval. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/139. Photo: Sam Lévin / Camera Press / Ufa.


Claudia Mori. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/342. Photo: Gérard Decaux.

 

Caracas

About the company Krüger, little is known. Later owners were the brothers Ebert. In 1978 or later, Gottfried Ebert moved the company from Hamburg to Caracas in Venezuela.

For a time, there was still a storage in Hamburg. J.S.A. (publisher J. Sleding in Amsterdam) was then Krüger's main Dutch customer. In Caracas, Krüger cooperated with the big publisher Intana.

The archive of Krüger (mainly German and international cityscapes) went to Sleding in Amsterdam. In 2000, the archive was bought by Han Ruyters, owner of the postcard shop Groeten uit... in the city of Utrecht.

At the shop, I bought some of the Krüger film star postcards which came from a sales book of a Krüger sales agent. Examples are the Elga Andersen and Aliki Vouyouklaki postcards here below. They still contain the white strip with name and number on the photo side, once used by the sales agent.


Elga Andersen. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/91. Photo: Sam Lévin.


Aliki Vouyouklaki. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/231.


Pascale Petit. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/65.


Gitte Haenning. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/379. Photo: Lothar Winkler.


Jayne Mansfield. German postcard by Krüger, nr. 900/78. Photo: Bernard of Hollywood.

This was the sixth post in a series on film star postcard publishers. Next week: Les vedettes de Cinema by A.N. For earlier posts, see the links at right under the caption 'The Publishers'.

Source: Frans ten Bookum and Henk Voskuilen (VDP-Bulletin).