Created in 1957 based on a design by the Belgian artist Alexandre Noskoff (1911-1979) as an advert for the Bremen cigarette factory Martin Brinkmann AG. The elaborate mosaic, more than 20 metres wide and entitled "Aufbruch" (Departure), shows scenes from tobacco production, shipping and processing. It is an expression of the financial strength of the Brinkmann Group at this time, as cigarette consumption in West Germany rose far above pre-war levels between 1950 and 1963.
The Brinkmann Group, which was based in Bremen until 2021, was known for its tobacco imports from various countries in Asia, America and Arabia and had been one of the most important tobacco producers in Europe since the end of the 19th century. During the Second World War, the company lost its overseas trading relationships. Instead, it participated in the exploitation of tobacco-growing regions in the Soviet Union occupied by the Wehrmacht and in the massive use of forced labour.
The decorative tiles illustrate how tobacco travelled from Sumatra, Macedonia, North and South America to Bremen. The actual advertising for the largest tobacco factory on the European continent with more than 6,000 employees at the time is limited to discreet lettering. The mural was designed like a triptych: The outer sections depict individual tobacco-growing regions overseas. The left part of the picture shows an idealised, stereotypical image of a presumably Chinese wage labourer in Sumatra, carrying tobacco leaves bundled on a stick over his shoulders. Next to him sits a female tobacco worker in front of a column capital in Macedonia. She is pulling small tobacco leaves from a stick and examining their drying before they are transported onwards in a basket by a donkey. In the right-hand part of the picture, a large, flowering Virginia tobacco plant is depicted next to an African-American plantation worker holding a tobacco leaf for quality inspection. The paddle steamer refers to a cultivation area in the southern states of the USA. The symbolic depiction of a South American deity with head and ear jewellery, feather crown and twisted smoking roll also refers to the beginnings of tobacco cultivation in America.
In the large centre picture, a sailing ship leads the viewer to the arrival in the "home port": the Hanseatic city of Bremen with the Town Musicians and the architectural landmarks. From a general cargo freighter, the tobacco is transported by three semi-gantry cranes on rails directly into brick warehouses. On the left in the foreground, between a Virginia tobacco barrel and a bundle of tobacco from Indonesia, a pipe-smoking sailor raises a large, colourful mask. An article in Brinkmann AG's "Tabakblatt" (issue 1/1958) describes it as an "African mask".
The mosaic was made in the Grünstadt earthenware factory from coloured majolica decorative tiles and was one of the world's largest ceramic mosaics at the time. It had been hidden by a layer of plaster and illuminated advertising since the 1960s and was only rediscovered during renovation work around 2000. After it was uncovered, the mosaic's monumental value became apparent due to its artistic design, high-quality production and realisation as well as its special documentary value for the history of Bremen, which is closely linked to the tobacco trade. Although it had already been decided to remove the mosaic, it was preserved, protected as part of the railway station monument and restored.
The artist Alexandre Noskoff was born on 29 August 1911 in St. Petersburg. He fled Russia with his family in 1917 and was the only member of the family to arrive in France, while his father initially lived in Berlin, his mother in London and his sister in Belgium. Alexandre attended grammar school in Turnai in Belgium from 1924 to 1929, then worked as a draughtsman in a factory in a Brussels suburb and began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Institute of Art History and Archaeology in Turnai in 1932. At the same time, he worked for the printing company J. Dutrieu et Co. in Turnai and for the Flamencourt company in Brussels. After falling ill, he moved in with his parents in Berlin in 1933. He spent a year in a sanatorium and then joined the Berlin Academy of Arts. Another source reports that Noskoff probably also studied under Cesar Klein (1876-1954). Klein taught wall and ceiling painting in Berlin and devoted himself in particular to mosaics in his works. Stylistically, influences on the Bremen mural can also be assumed here. At the beginning of the Second World War, Noskoff was interned and spent some time in prison. In the years 1940-1943, he was employed by the "Deutscher Verlag" in Berlin, executed a series of murals and then worked as a ceramic painter in Vienna. In 1946, he lived in Munich and with American and German youth magazines before returning to Belgium in 1949 and working at the Unica toy factory in Courtrai. In the early 1950s, Noskoff worked with the youth department of the Belgian Red Cross, for which he produced a series of posters and calendars. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was then employed as a full-time artist for the Brussels daily newspaper Le Soir (The Evening) and worked as an illustrator. The bright colours of Noskoff's illustrations can be used to make references to the Bremen mosaic.
The visual language typical of the 1950s, which Noskoff used on behalf of Martin Brinkmann AG, points to the unbroken continuity of colonial and racist thought patterns in early West Germany. The real working and production conditions on the tobacco plantations give way to an idealised, European idea, in which above all the "foreign" and "exotic" aspects associated with these images were symbolised, d as since the Enlightenment they have been seen as the antithesis of European reason and cultural superiority. The depictions on the mosaic in Bremen's railway station are typical of the advertising for coffee, tea and chocolate in those years. They were also used by many other companies that sold products from distant countries during this period. They thus helped to perpetuate colonial and racist stereotypes. Today, this depiction is rightly being critically scrutinised. Since 2017, the mosaic has been part of colonial-critical city tours that initiate debates, point out interdependencies and ensure that history is also told from the perspective of those affected by colonial policy.
Text: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Staatsarchiv Bremen, Focke-Museum, Landeszentrale für politische Bildung
