About the Department of Graphic Design (Broadsheets, Posters, and Ex Libris)

The collection of broadsheets was set up in 1912 as a separate section of the royal and imperial Court Library. It consisted of some 10,000 prints from the period of the 16th to the 19th centuries. Over half of them are broadsheets that relate to the Revolution of 1848.
 
Another special collection of the Court Library, the “War Collection” of documents during the First World War at the front and in civilian areas with posters, broadsheets, postcards, children’s drawings, “vivat” banners, etc, and the important collection “War Graphics” by Dr. Ottokar Mascha was taken over by the Broadsheet Collection in 1923. 
 
Since 1918 the expansion of holdings of broadsheets and posters has occurred mainly through obligatory delivery of specimens of objects printed in Austria and having as their main focus the areas of politics and art.
 
Valuable special collections of posters, acquired through donations, sponsoring, and purchase, complete the obligatory contributions to the holdings and offer a comprehensive documentation of Austrian graphic design, especially from the 20th century.

The Erhard Buschbeck Collection: posters of the Jugendstil (Youth Style) and of early expressionism. The Joseph Gregor Collection: 3,500 international film posters with more than 500 vintage Hollywood posters and about 1,000 silent film posters.
Posters of the New Gallery 1923– 1954: The posters in the Avantgarde Gallery were mostly done by artists of the expressionist school and the Hagenbund.
Poster Archives of the Austrian Advertising Artists' Asociation: 1,300 posters, among them advertisements for products from the start of the 20th century up to the 1960’s, by the best-known Austrian poster designers.

Estates of Austrian graphic artists
Alexander Exax (1896–1994), Wilhelm Jaruska (1916-2008), Rudolf Köhl (1896 – 1966), August Schmid (1913 – 1998), Kurt Schwarz (b. 1916), Emmerich Weninger (1907-1977)  and Catherine Rollier (b. 1955).

The Ex Libris Collection consists of some 9,000 sheets from the period 1500 - 1850. The core of the collection is made up of ex libris from the books of the Court Library, together with  Rudolf  Benkard’s collection, acquired in 1930, with more than 6,000 sheets from the 16th to the 18th centuries. In the 1970’s, because of new purchases and donations, the time focus shifted to the first half of the 20th century. Since 1996 the collection, having expanded to about 50,000 small-scale graphics, has been documenting contemporary ex libris creations as well.

In the framework of the reorganisation of the Austrian National Library the Department of Broadsheets, Posters, and Ex Libris was created in 1995 through the amalgamation of two sections of the printed material collections. Since then research commissions and participation in projects has made possible a scholarly processing of the holdings.