Stefan R. Landsberger (1955-2024) (original) (raw)

Stefan Landsberger, Beijing 2015

With great sadness we inform you that Stefan Landsberger has passed away, completely unexpectedly, on 26 September 2024. He was, among many other things, co-founder and editor of this website, and owner of thousands of Chinese propaganda posters displayed here.

Stefan Landsberger, born 1955 in Amsterdam, studied Sinology at Leiden University and obtained his PHD in 1994 with his dissertation Visualizing the Future: Chinese Propaganda Posters from the ‘Four Modernizations’ Era, 1978 – 1988, published and reprinted several times as Chinese Propaganda Posters: From Revolution to Modernization. The publication testified of his fascination with totalitarian propaganda and was for a large part based on his personal poster collection, accumulated by numerous visits to bookshops in China.

Stefan started working at Leiden University, gave courses on contemporary China for decades, supervised hundreds of students in writing their theses, gave huge numbers of lectures to various audiences and comments on current events for the press, radio and other media, published articles, was on the editorial board of scientific journals, and eventually became Associate Professor of contemporary Chinese History and Society at Leiden University, and Emeritus Olfert Dapper Professor of Contemporary Chinese Culture at the University of Amsterdam. He truly loved his profession. More on his academic career, his impact and the shock his sudden passing caused can be found in a loving In Memoriam on the Leiden University website with contributions from former colleagues and students.

In the second half of the 1980s Stefan became involved in projects at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. He was research assistant in Tony Saich’s project on Henk Sneevliet and his role in the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party, which led to publications that are still considered seminal. In 1989 and 1990 he participated in the Chinese People's Movement project, a cooperation between Leiden University, the IISH and several other partners, gathering documents from the 1989 democratization movement and its brutal repression in 1989.

When I first met Stefan, in 1985 or 1986, I had just started working at the IISH as assistant-cataloger of the poster collection. Saying “I met him” requires some nuance. I was present in the room when he and my then superior talked about Chinese posters – both the Institute’s and his own. I was not supposed to participate in such conversations but listened with red ears and was given the task to catalog the duplicates from his personal collection he started giving to the IISH. It was a privilege and pleasure. I was almost as crazy about these posters as Stefan, despite not knowing much about China yet.

After finishing his dissertation Stefan decided to deposit his poster collection – 700 pieces at the time – at the IISH. He wanted the collection to be sustainably preserved and made accessible, which would not be possible when he kept it in his attic. Our talks started to take place without supervision as we discovered our shared passion and our shared interest in something new – the internet. In 1997 Stefan started his “Stefan Landsberger Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages” website, publishing images of posters with basic data and contextual information. It was one of the very first initiatives of this kind worldwide and became a huge success.

In 1998 we travelled to China together for the first time, to contact Chinese organizations and investigate possibilities to cooperate - and to collect posters. During two and a half weeks Stefan introduced me to people, places and things he knew and loved in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. He liked sharing his knowledge and often strong opinions. I could not have wished for a better guide and had the privilege to travel together with him many more times. We worked hard and yes: we had lots of fun as well. Stefan’s collection grew steadily to over 3,500 pieces, which he cataloged all very carefully, piece by piece.

Stefan was very active in publishing and exhibiting his collection. He co-organized exhibitions, the largest of which took place in the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, 2008. Together we prepared the publication Chinese Posters. The IISH-Landsberger Collections (München: Prestel, 2009), showing 250 examples from our collections and a wonderful introduction by Kuiyi Shen. And we decided to merge his website with the virtual poster exhibitions I had been making for the IISH. Our goal was to publish every poster he, the IISH and a private collector owned on a new website – chineseposters.net. It was an enormous job, but we both worked on it with great pleasure.

In the later 2010s travelling to China for research and collecting became more complicated. More than once, Stefan was confronted with Chinese patriots who denied him the right to collect Chinese posters at all, and demanded he gave his collection “back to China”. The website, heavily used in China and massively copied to Chinese sites and social media, was blocked in 2020. In 2019 Stefan went into early retirement. He loved his profession as much as before, but was exhausted by academic bureaucracy, power struggles, the umpteenth reorganization and the repeating policy debates at the University. He never regretted his decision, never looked back in anger, but thoroughly enjoyed his newfound freedom. One of the things he kept doing was working on this website, which I will try to maintain in his honor.

Stefan left us far too soon. He will be missed terribly by his colleagues, former students, friends, relatives and above all by his beloved wife, Lindai. We wish her all the strength she needs.

Marien van der Heijden, 20 October 2024

Image: Stefan Landsberger meeting a poster collector in Beijing, May 2015.