| Creator | Walther Koch |
| Printing year | 1908 |
| Sheet size (cm) | 107×77 |
| Printing technique | Lithograph |
| Printer | Graphische Anstalt J. E. Wolfensberger |
| Condition | A |
| Asking price | on inquiry |
| Categories | Grisons, Switzerland, Winter Posters |
Bobsledding is a serious business, judging by the look the pusher is giving us. This is entirely understandable when you consider that the daredevil foreigners – at that time, in the early 20th century, they were almost always tourists from Anglo-Saxon countries – hurtled without any protective equipment down the ice track on what were undoubtedly rather rickety machines.
Nevertheless, this Original Vintage Poster designed by Walther Koch explicitly refers to the sled run established at the end of 1900, which from December onwards used the connecting road between the Schatzalp funicular railway to Schatzalp Road in the direction of Davos Platz. But as numerous bobsleds soon began using the track (over 1,000 times in the 1905/06 winter season), a race course completely separate from the sled run was created in 1907, which was not abandoned until 1934.
However, since Koch clearly depicts one of these early bobsleds on his poster and not a sled, since the poster was printed in 1908 (instead of 1911 as is almost universally recorded), and since the length of 3.4 kilometers corresponds to the bobsled track but not the sled track, we can conclude that what is being advertised here is the newly opened bobsled run.
How it came to be that though the sled run is mentioned remains a mystery – all the more so since Koch had lived in Davos since 1902 and was undoubtedly familiar with local conditions. Perhaps a translation error, because bobsledding was dominated by Anglo-Saxons? Without being familiar with the linguistic subtleties of the terms used 120 years ago, the precise translation of the English words sled, sledge, and sleigh is still not entirely straightforward today.
maybe of interest as well:
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