Parsenn Klosters

Attentive readers of German and Swiss newspapers and magazines in the 1930s repeatedly encountered Karl Straub (1900 – 1997), who created advertisements primarily for a whole range of spa and vacation resorts as well as established brand products. The skillful combination of drawing and photography gave his work a certain distinctiveness and thus plenty of attention. He designed his most famous poster in 1927 for the opening of the Stuttgart Weissenhof Estate, conceived by the Deutscher Werkbund as a building exhibition, which is arguably the most significant testimony to New Objectivity architecture.

On the original poster offered here, designed in 1933, he placed a female skier drawn in the Art Deco style in front of a photograph of the area around the Parsenn hut, built below the Totalp-Schwarzhorn, which at the time was still completely without any ski lifts. Accordingly, skiing almost always and everywhere meant: at least 95 percent of the time spent climbing up, and at most 5 percent for the descent. However, the fact that from the end of 1932 the Parsenn funicular brought skiers from Davos up to the Weissfluhjoch likely prompted the tourist board of neighboring Klosters to commission this poster (and to try to lure at least some of the enthusiastic ski sportsmen from Davos to Klosters). Klosters did not get its own connection up into the mountains until 1950 with the Gotschna cable car.