SEO Title: Ernst Litfaß and the History of Advertising Columns
Meta Description: Discover how Ernst Litfaß transformed outdoor advertising in Berlin in 1855, why advertising columns already existed in Paris and how poster space became a business.
Introduction: When Advertising Space Became a Business
A wall covered with advertisements is not necessarily a valuable advertising medium. If new posters are constantly pasted over old ones, advertisers cannot predict how long their messages will remain visible. If nobody controls the location, there may be no reliable way to purchase visibility.
This was one of the problems confronting nineteenth-century advertisers.
In Berlin, the printer and publisher Ernst Litfaß developed a business around solving it.
His solution became one of the most recognizable objects in German urban history: the cylindrical advertising column known as the Litfaßsäule.
The first columns appeared in Berlin in 1855.
Their introduction marked an important stage in the commercialization of public advertising space.
However, the historical significance of the Litfaß column goes beyond its physical appearance.
The columns created a system in which advertising locations could be controlled, managed and sold.
The arrangement involved the police authorities, private advertisers, printing businesses and the wider urban public.
It also had political consequences.
By concentrating posters on approved structures, the authorities gained additional opportunities to monitor public communication.
The history of the advertising column is therefore a story about commercial innovation, urban planning and the relationship between visibility and power.
Who Was Ernst Litfaß?
Ernst Theodor Amandus Litfaß was born in Berlin in 1816.
He became a printer, publisher and entrepreneur.
His professional activities reflected the expanding importance of printed communication in nineteenth-century cities.
The Berlin City Museum documents his involvement in publishing, commercial printing and the promotion of entertainment events (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
Litfaß took over the family printing business in 1845 and invested in its development.
He was interested in the economic possibilities of printing technology.
He also understood the commercial requirements of businesses that needed to reach urban audiences.
His later advertising columns emerged from this combination of technical knowledge and entrepreneurial ambition.
Litfaß did not simply design a new structure.
He developed a system that connected the production of printed advertisements with their distribution in public space.
Berlin Before Organized Poster Advertising
Berlin experienced significant economic and urban changes during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Commercial activity expanded.
Entertainment businesses competed for customers.
Theatres, concerts and exhibitions required publicity.
Printed posters offered an effective way to communicate with people moving through the city.
However, the posting of advertisements was not yet organized through a comprehensive system of designated advertising sites.
Notices appeared on walls, fences and trees.
New posters could cover existing advertisements.
The resulting accumulation of paper became a problem for the authorities.
It also created uncertainty for advertisers.
A business might pay to print a poster without knowing how long it would remain visible.
The Berlin City Museum identifies this disorderly posting environment as a major reason for the development of Litfaß’s advertising columns (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
Why Outdoor Advertising Needed Organization
The fundamental problem was not a lack of advertising messages.
Businesses already had plenty to communicate.
What was missing was a reliable infrastructure for displaying those messages.
A printed poster had little commercial value if it could not be seen.
Its usefulness depended on where it was placed and how long it remained available to the public.
An organized advertising site could address both problems.
It could provide a predictable location.
It could also establish rules for posting and replacing advertisements.
Litfaß recognized that such a system could be economically valuable.
Instead of relying on uncontrolled access to walls and other surfaces, advertisers could purchase a managed service.
This transformed advertising space into a commercial product.
Were Advertising Columns Invented in Berlin?
The answer depends on how the invention is defined.
Ernst Litfaß is closely associated with the systematic introduction of advertising columns in Berlin.
However, comparable public posting structures existed elsewhere before 1855.
Paris provides an important example.
In 1839, the French capital introduced structures known as colonnes moresques.
These combined facilities for public notices with public urinals and other street installations.
The French heritage organization Fédération Patrimoine-Environnement documents these structures as predecessors of the later Morris advertising columns (Fédération Patrimoine-Environnement, 2019).
The evidence therefore does not support the claim that Litfaß invented every form of advertising pillar.
His historical achievement was the development of a particularly successful, organized and commercially managed system in Berlin.
Paris in 1839: The Colonnes Moresques
The early Parisian columns illustrate how public advertising developed alongside urban infrastructure.
The city needed places for official notices and other public information.
At the same time, municipal authorities were developing street facilities for practical purposes.
Combining advertising surfaces with public urinals offered a relatively economical solution.
The structures could serve more than one function.
However, the arrangement also had disadvantages.
A public notice or theatre advertisement displayed beside a sanitary facility did not necessarily provide an ideal environment for commercial promotion.
During the following decades, Paris moved toward dedicated advertising columns.
The later Morris columns became famous for their association with theatrical and cultural advertising.
The earlier structures nevertheless demonstrate that the idea of a designated public posting surface existed before Litfaß established his Berlin system.
The Influence of London and Paris
Litfaß travelled outside Prussia and encountered developments in other European cities.
The Berlin City Museum suggests that earlier structures in London and Paris probably influenced his plans (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
He visited Paris around the turn of 1853 and 1854.
The trip is significant because it places his invention within a wider European history of urban advertising.
Ideas about street furniture, public notices and commercial visibility circulated between cities.
Entrepreneurs could observe existing practices and adapt them to different markets.
However, the evidence does not establish that Litfaß copied a single specific structure.
The precise relationship between the different early advertising devices requires careful historical interpretation.
What is clear is that his Berlin system developed after comparable experiments had already taken place elsewhere.
Litfaß and the Printing Industry
Litfaß’s experience as a printer was central to his business model.
A printer earned revenue from producing advertisements.
Yet the customer still needed somewhere to display them.
By controlling advertising locations, Litfaß could offer an additional service.
He could connect production with distribution.
This created opportunities for recurring income.
The printing of a poster was generally a one-time transaction.
An advertising column, by contrast, could be used repeatedly.
Different customers could purchase advertising space at different times.
The physical structure remained in place while the displayed messages changed.
From a modern business-history perspective, this represents an important shift from selling printed products to managing advertising infrastructure.
A Giant Poster in 1849
Litfaß had experimented with large-scale advertising before his columns appeared.
According to the Berlin City Museum, he produced an enormous poster measuring approximately six by ten metres for the Berlin Industrial Exhibition in 1849 (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
This is a remarkable detail.
It demonstrates that his interest in visual publicity predated the famous advertising column.
A poster of that size required substantial printing and installation capabilities.
It was designed to attract attention on a scale far beyond an ordinary notice.
The industrial exhibition provided a suitable occasion for such a display.
Exhibitions promoted commercial products, technical achievements and economic development.
They were therefore important settings for experimentation with advertising.
The 1849 poster also reveals that Litfaß understood the value of spectacle in commercial communication.
The Tages-Telegraph and Urban Entertainment
In 1851, Litfaß established the Tages-Telegraph.
The Berlin City Museum describes it as an early Berlin city magazine providing information about theatre, concerts, restaurants and entertainment (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
This publication is relevant to the history of advertising because it connected information with consumer decisions.
Readers could discover what was happening in the city.
The businesses mentioned in the publication gained publicity.
The magazine belonged to a growing culture of urban leisure and commercial communication.
Litfaß was therefore already active in the promotion of events before introducing his columns.
His later advertising infrastructure complemented these publishing activities.
Together, they show how different media could serve the same urban advertising market.
The Agreement of December 5, 1854
The decisive event in the history of the Litfaß column was a contract signed on December 5, 1854.
The agreement between Litfaß and the Berlin police authorities authorized the installation and operation of 150 advertising facilities.
The concession was granted for a period of 15 years.
At the end of that period, ownership of the structures was to pass to the police authorities.
Litfaß received the exclusive right to charge fees for private notices displayed on the approved facilities.
These contractual details are documented by the Berlin City Museum (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
The arrangement illustrates an early relationship between municipal regulation and private advertising enterprise.
The authorities gained a more orderly system of public posting.
Litfaß gained access to a commercially valuable advertising network.
Advertisers gained a legal way to display their messages.
The Economics of the Advertising Concession
The concession created a distinctive economic structure.
Litfaß did not merely own a printing business.
He controlled access to a network of advertising sites.
This provided him with a strong competitive position.
Businesses wishing to use the authorized facilities had to work within the system he operated.
The arrangement offered the potential for recurring revenue.
The columns could display different advertisements over time.
The available surface area could be sold repeatedly.
The value of the business therefore depended not only on the physical structures but also on the exclusive rights attached to them.
The Berlin City Museum describes the commercial benefits of Litfaß’s near-monopoly in poster advertising (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
Was Advertising Space Free?
The historical record contradicts the idea that Litfaß provided free advertising space to commercial customers.
His concession explicitly allowed him to charge fees for private advertisements.
The columns were publicly accessible structures, but their commercial use was regulated.
This distinction is fundamental.
Public visibility did not mean free access.
Advertisers purchased the right to display their messages at approved locations.
The arrangement transformed the use of public space into a paid service.
The business model anticipated a central feature of modern outdoor advertising: the sale of access to an audience through controlled advertising locations.
The First Litfaß Column in April 1855
The Berlin City Museum dates the installation of the first Litfaß column to April 15, 1855.
It stood at the corner of Münzstraße and Grenadierstraße.
The latter street is now called Almstadtstraße (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
The column represented a new type of permanent advertising infrastructure.
Its cylindrical form offered space for posters around the entire structure.
Advertisements could be approached from different directions.
The column did not depend on a private building wall.
It could stand at a selected location in the public street environment.
These features made it particularly suitable for urban advertising.
July 1, 1855: The Public Launch
The organized advertising system was publicly introduced on July 1, 1855.
By then, Berlin had 100 newly erected advertising columns.
Another 50 facilities were provided through the adaptation of existing urban structures.
The historical Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie describes the inauguration as a major public occasion (ADB, 1883).
The ceremony helped attract attention to the new medium.
It also communicated the official character of the system.
For advertisers, the public introduction demonstrated that the columns were intended to become permanent features of the city.
For Litfaß, it was an opportunity to promote his own advertising infrastructure.
In modern terminology, the event can be interpreted as a public launch campaign.
Why the Number 150 Is Often Misunderstood
Historical accounts frequently refer to 150 early Litfaß advertising facilities.
This number does not mean that 150 entirely new cylindrical columns were constructed in 1855.
The original arrangement combined 100 new columns with 50 existing structures adapted for posting.
The distinction is supported by historical biographical material and the Berlin museum account (ADB, 1883; Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
The difference matters because it reveals the practical character of the project.
Litfaß did not rely exclusively on new construction.
He also made use of existing urban infrastructure.
This reduced the need to create every advertising location from the beginning.
The Advertising Column as a Repeatable Business Model
The advertising column introduced a form of commercial continuity.
A poster might remain visible for a limited period.
The column itself could remain in place for years.
This allowed successive advertisers to use the same location.
The business therefore separated the temporary message from the permanent advertising infrastructure.
That distinction remains important in outdoor advertising today.
A billboard operator may control a site while different advertisers purchase display periods.
The physical location and the advertising content are economically distinct.
Litfaß’s system was an early example of this arrangement.
Why Advertisers Benefited
The columns offered advertisers more predictable display conditions.
Under uncontrolled posting practices, an advertisement might quickly be covered by another poster.
A managed advertising location could reduce that uncertainty.
German History in Documents and Images notes that customers could expect their advertisements to remain visible during the period for which they had paid (GHDI, n.d.).
This was an important commercial advantage.
The customer was purchasing more than the physical act of posting.
The service included organized access to a location and a degree of protection against unauthorized replacement.
The resulting predictability helped turn public posting into a professional advertising service.
Advertising Columns and Political Control
The benefits of the system were not exclusively commercial.
The authorities also gained greater control over public communication.
A limited network of approved posting sites was easier to supervise than a city covered with advertisements in unpredictable locations.
The Berlin City Museum records that Litfaß employed an inspector who checked the columns regularly (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
The system therefore created opportunities to identify and remove unwanted messages.
German History in Documents and Images explicitly discusses the role of censorship in the development of the columns (GHDI, n.d.).
This aspect is essential to a balanced historical interpretation.
The advertising column increased the organization of public information while also facilitating its regulation.
The Relationship Between Public Information and Commercial Advertising
The columns were used for more than private commercial promotion.
Official notices and public information also formed part of the system.
This combination helped make the columns socially useful.
Citizens could encounter information about events and official matters in recognizable locations.
Commercial advertisers benefited from the same established infrastructure.
The relationship between public communication and private revenue was therefore central to the medium.
The advertising column operated at the intersection of municipal information and commercial publicity.
This dual function distinguished it from a simple privately owned sign.
The Importance of Location
Litfaß intended his columns to stand at prominent streets and public places.
This was commercially logical.
An advertisement displayed in a busy location had more opportunities to be seen.
The value of the site depended on the surrounding flow of people.
The cylindrical shape also supported visibility from multiple directions.
The Berlin City Museum describes Litfaß’s intention to place columns at heavily frequented street corners and squares (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
This reveals an early appreciation of the economic importance of advertising location.
Although modern audience measurement did not exist in its present form, the relationship between visibility and commercial value was already apparent.
The Connection Between Advertising and Entertainment
Entertainment businesses were important users of public advertising.
Theatres, concerts and circuses needed to attract audiences to events taking place at specific times.
Posters provided an effective way to announce those events.
Litfaß’s publishing activities had already connected him with the entertainment market.
His advertising columns offered another channel for the same industry.
The development illustrates how commercial media often emerge in response to particular customer needs.
Travelling and time-limited entertainment businesses were especially dependent on rapid publicity.
A fixed advertising column could help them reach audiences in the streets.
Ernst Renz and the Financing of the Columns
The circus director Ernst Renz was connected with the early development of the Berlin advertising columns.
The Stiftung Historische Kirchhöfe und Friedhöfe reports that Renz financed the first columns (Stiftung Historische Kirchhöfe und Friedhöfe, n.d.).
This connection is significant because circus companies had strong incentives to promote their performances.
Their audiences depended on public awareness of upcoming shows.
The financing of advertising infrastructure by an entertainment entrepreneur therefore fits the commercial circumstances of the period.
However, the available source does not establish every detail of the financial arrangement.
It would be misleading to invent a precise ownership structure or contractual return without additional archival evidence.
Colour Printing and the Circus Renz Poster of 1869
Litfaß continued to experiment with printing technology after introducing his columns.
In 1869, he produced a colour poster promoting an appearance by the Siamese twins at Circus Renz.
The Berlin City Museum identifies this as the first colour poster printed in Berlin and records that Litfaß established a dedicated colour-printing workshop for the project (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
The geographical qualification is important.
The claim concerns Berlin, not the entire world.
Colour printing and illustrated advertising had already developed elsewhere.
The historical significance lies in Litfaß’s contribution to local advertising production.
He combined an interest in public advertising space with innovations in the visual presentation of promotional messages.
The Rise of Visual Poster Advertising
Colour printing expanded the expressive possibilities of posters.
Images could attract attention more quickly than lengthy text.
Strong colours could help a message stand out in a busy urban environment.
For entertainment businesses, visual advertising offered particular advantages.
A poster could suggest the excitement of a performance before the audience attended it.
Advertising columns provided suitable surfaces for such material.
The medium and the printed message therefore developed together.
Improved printing increased the visual appeal of the posters.
Organized advertising sites increased the reliability of their display.
The International Spread of Advertising Columns
The advertising column did not remain a purely Berlin phenomenon.
Similar structures appeared in other cities.
Different countries developed their own versions.
Paris became especially associated with the Morris column.
These columns were introduced through a concession awarded to the Morris printing family in 1868.
The French advertising company JCDecaux traces the history of this medium and its continuing role in outdoor advertising (JCDecaux, 2014).
The development demonstrates how a practical advertising concept could be adapted to different urban environments.
The structures varied in design.
Their regulatory arrangements also differed.
Yet they shared the principle of concentrating public advertising on designated surfaces.
The Morris Column in Paris
The Parisian Morris column became one of the most recognizable forms of European advertising street furniture.
It was particularly associated with theatre and cultural publicity.
Its decorative design reflected the visual character of nineteenth-century Paris.
The Morris system followed earlier experiments with public posting structures.
The colonnes moresques of 1839 had combined noticeboards with public facilities.
The later Morris columns separated advertising from those functions.
The Fédération Patrimoine-Environnement documents the development from the earlier structures to the 1868 concession (Fédération Patrimoine-Environnement, 2019).
The Parisian example therefore complicates any simple claim that the advertising column originated exclusively in Berlin.
The history involved multiple cities, experiments and adaptations.
Advertising Columns and the Development of Urban Media
The spread of advertising columns reflected the growing importance of urban media.
Cities concentrated businesses, consumers and public activity.
Advertisers wanted access to those audiences.
Municipal authorities wanted to manage the visual appearance of streets.
Advertising columns provided a compromise between commercial demand and urban regulation.
They offered a structured medium through which public visibility could be purchased.
Their success illustrates how advertising infrastructure can become a permanent part of the built environment.
The Litfaß Column in the Twentieth Century
The columns remained visible in German cities long after Ernst Litfaß died in 1874.
Their materials and construction methods changed.
Different generations of columns were built from metal, artificial stone and concrete.
The Berlin City Museum preserves historical photographs and objects documenting their changing appearance (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
The columns continued to carry advertisements and public announcements.
They survived the emergence of new advertising media.
Newspapers, radio, television and digital platforms changed the communications industry.
Yet the advertising column remained a recognizable form of urban publicity.
The Advertising Column as Cultural Heritage
Today, historic advertising columns have significance beyond their commercial use.
They are evidence of earlier approaches to urban planning and visual communication.
Their physical form reflects the history of public advertising.
Older examples can also reveal changes in architecture, construction materials and street design.
The Berlin City Museum notes that many historic columns have been removed or replaced (Stadtmuseum Berlin, n.d.).
Surviving examples therefore have potential heritage value.
They remind contemporary observers that advertising infrastructure is part of urban history.
What Ernst Litfaß Contributed to Marketing History
Litfaß’s contribution can be understood through the organization of advertising services.
He did not invent the desire to advertise.
He did not invent printed posters.
Nor did he create the first public posting structure in history.
His achievement was to establish a commercially successful system connecting advertising sites, printing, regulation and customers.
The innovation lay in the organization of an existing activity.
Businesses already wanted to communicate with urban audiences.
Litfaß provided a more predictable way to do so.
The model demonstrates that marketing innovation can emerge from distribution infrastructure rather than from advertising content alone.
Conclusion: The Business Behind the Advertising Column
The history of the Litfaß column begins with a commercial and administrative problem.
Berlin’s public spaces were crowded with uncontrolled posters.
Advertisers needed visibility.
The authorities wanted order.
Ernst Litfaß developed a system that served both interests.
His 1854 concession created the legal foundation.
The first columns appeared in 1855.
The resulting network became a commercially valuable advertising medium.
However, earlier public posting structures already existed, particularly in Paris.
Litfaß was therefore not the inventor of all advertising columns.
His importance lies in the systematic commercialization and management of advertising space in Berlin.
The advertising column became a lasting symbol of outdoor advertising because it connected public visibility with a repeatable business model.
That principle remains relevant to the advertising industry today.
References
ADB (1883) ‘Litfaß, Ernst’, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Available at: https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Litfa%C3%9F (Accessed: 12 October 2026).
Fédération Patrimoine-Environnement (2019) ‘550 colonnes Morris vont être changées à Paris’. Available at: https://www.patrimoine-environnement.fr/550-colonnes-morris-vont-etre-changees-a-paris/ (Accessed: 12 October 2026).
German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) (n.d.) ‘One of the First Advertising Columns Designed by Ernst Litfaß in Berlin (c. 1860)’. Available at: https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-vormaerz-to-prussian-dominance-1815-1866/one-of-the-first-advertisement-pillars-designed-by-ernst-litfass-in-berlin-c-1860 (Accessed: 12 October 2026).
JCDecaux (2014) ‘La colonne Morris: un support publicitaire historique et mythique’. Available at: https://www.jcdecaux.com/fr/blog/la-colonne-morris-un-support-publicitaire-historique-et-mythique (Accessed: 12 October 2026).
Stadtmuseum Berlin (n.d.) ‘Ernst Litfaß’. Available at: https://www.berlin.museum/en/article/ernst-litfas (Accessed: 12 October 2026).
Stiftung Historische Kirchhöfe und Friedhöfe (n.d.) ‘Ernst Theodor Amadeus Litfass’. Available at: https://stiftung-historische-friedhoefe.de/ernst-theodor-amadeus-litfass/ (Accessed: 12 October 2026).
