| Creator | Emil Cardinaux |
| Printing year | 1920 |
| Sheet size (cm) | 128×90.5 |
| Printing technique | Lithograph |
| Printer | unknown; probably Graph. Anstalt J. E. Wolfensberger |
| Condition | A- |
| Asking price | 8'700 CHF |
| Categories | Bern(ese Oberland), Switzerland, Winter Posters |
Original poster and extremely rare text variant using the motif that Emil Cardinaux had designed in 1919 for the second summer ski race on the Jungfraujoch and which the «leading winter resorts of the Bernese Oberland» Grindelwald, Wengen and Mürren used for their own purposes around 1920 (as, of course, the Jungfrau Railway, which opened in full operation in 1912, also had its own versions printed, without which these ski races would never have existed).
The first summer ski race took place at the end of July 1914, organized by the Bern Ski Club, before the Jungfraujoch Ski Club acted as organizer from 1919, in order to make the Jungfraujoch or the Aletsch Glacier area one of the Swiss central ski resorts in accordance with the statutes – no doubt in collaboration with the Jungfrau Railway and the three villages, which were able to benefit from the rapidly growing popularity of skiing to such an extent that they are now among the most famous winter sports resorts of all.
Despite the melting, the Jungfraujoch still offers a stunning view of the firn that feeds the Aletsch Glacier, the ice flow itself and the four-thousand-metre peaks in the background. Accordingly, the glacier is the heart of the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch Unesco World Heritage Site. The stream is 22 kilometers long and covers an area of around 80 square kilometers. At its deepest point at Konkordiaplatz, the largest glacier in the Alps is 900 meters thick. All in all, there are around ten billion tons of ice here.
Born in Bern, Cardinaux (1877 – 1936) went to Munich as a 21-year-old in the heyday of the Belle Époque to study law – but he was rather captivated by the vibrant bohemian life of the city. He turned to art, came under the influence of the symbolist Franz van Stuck and, after returning to Switzerland in 1904, was soon regarded as a «Hodlerian». In order to secure his livelihood, he turned to applied graphic art, which was now also emerging in Switzerland, after two or three of the posters he had designed in Munich had already been executed. Today, he is considered one of the four or five most important pioneers of modern Swiss posters.
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