Hans Sachs (poster collector)

[1] He began collecting posters when he was only 16, possibly inspired by a gift to his father of three life-size prints of Sarah Bernhardt signed by Alphonse Mucha.

While he was successful as a dentist, with Albert Einstein among his patients, and wrote a number of standard works on periodontosis, his avocation was posters.

[2][4] He regularly worked from three o'clock in the afternoon into the night on his passion, making a detailed index card for each poster, each of which was identified by a numbered label.

It is unclear why the poster group and its magazine ended, possibly because of conflicts between collectors, art lovers, commercial artists, and business.

[3] After the war, he was appointed to a panel charged with selecting designs for postage stamps for the new Weimar Republic, and to the board of film censorship.

Then a fire broke out in his house in the room where they were kept, but the thick walls of their storage cabinets insulated the posters from damage.

He hired a famous architect, Oskar Kaufmann, to design a small museum, a special room in his house to hold and display his posters.

There were posters by the Viennese Secessionists Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich, and the Munich Secessionist Franz Stuck; and Art Nouveau and Jugendstil posters by Aubrey Beardsley, Thomas Theodor Heine, Alphonse Mucha, and Henry van de Velde.

Others were by Continental leaders in graphic design and posters Lucian Bernhard, Jules Chéret, Max Pechstein, Théophile Steinlen, and Félix Vallotton, joined with works by famous American artists James Montgomery Flagg, Charles Dana Gibson, Maxfield Parrish, and Edward Penfield.

[6][10] After seven years in the courts, in February 2009, Hans Sachs's son Peter was ruled to be the lawful owner of 4,344 posters, but it was not until 2013 that they were released.