User:Elemimele/BergnerTranslation

''This is a very rough translation of the first part of Sylvia Lott's article for AutoBild Klassik, placed here so that other editors deciding on the notability of Bruno Bergner can assess whether the article is adequate. I haven't translated the whole thing (my kid's getting hungry!). This translation will have to disappear as soon as editors have assessed it, because the copyright to the original document obviously belongs with AutoBild, and I'm not sure how much I can translate, or for what purposes, before it become an infringement.''

Everyone, who's over 40 or interested in the old-time parts market, knows Bruno Bergner - without knowing it. We're talking about the petrol-illustrator of the 50's and 60's. He is the source of the little man who tells us with poignant simplicity: "it's better to stay alive than stay on time". The sign hung next to articulated lorry drivers' bunks, and was stuck on thousands of dashboards in delivery vans and lorries. But Bruno Berger (1923-1995) also illustrated eight little books that were handed out free to customers in petrol stations, each with "50 tips for drivers"; they appeared between 1957 and 1963, printed in millions. His illustrations for "Tours 1 and 2", "Rest and Travel" and everyone who was "At war with paragraphs" had the same effect on the mind as a Sunday afternoon film with Heinz Ruehmann. The world is colouful, everything will be good, and nothing bad can happen.

It was actually totally different in the real life of Bruno Bergner, who was born Bruno Gurski in Lodz. After Poland fell to the Nazis in 1939, he took the name Bergner in 1940 and as a 17 year old began work with the state work service on the island of Texel. He entered the war at Christmas 1941 in a tank crew in the Balkans and in Normandy. He was badly injured in the back by grenade shrapnel. By the end of the war he was in a Soviet prison, where he remained for 4 years in the Dnipropetrowsk prison camp in the Ukraine. Another prisoner taught him to draw and paint. "My father probably survived because of it," says his son, Klaus (49), "because he painted the flat of a Russian officer, and occasionally painted a picture for him." In 1949 he was reunited with his mother and brother in the vicinity of Teufelsmoors near Bremen. The foggy feel of this region appeared later in many of his watercolours.

At the beginning of the 50's, Bergner moved to Hamburg, where he became the right-hand man of the illustrator Carl Busse, whose studio worked for the mineral company Nitag AG amongst others. He learnt further painting techniques, mostly on his own. He married a woman, whom he'd got to know in hospital during the war. His back continued to cause him much trouble, "... but my father was a man who looked forwards". In 1956, his boss, Carl Busse, moved to Cologne. Nitag merged with Gasolin, whose advertising manager was and remains Heinz Restorff (now 83); he recognised Bruno Bergner's potential: "before this, Busse was always my contact."

Bergner became self-employed, which he remained for the rest of his life. Heinz Restoff wrote the text; "We had the ideas, and developed the advertising campaigns together" he remembered. "In the course of time, Bergner got a fixed yearly contract of 50,000DM" - a sum that would have matched a company chief elsewhere.

At the beginning, the adverts were supposed always to have a certain feeling of happiness, which Bergner achieved without effort ("even though he was a heavy-blooded West-Prussian!" says Restorff). Restorff described Bergner as "with a strong artistic sense", and a love of Bauhaus designs; "He became a good friend".

Bruno Bergner shaped the image of the oil-company Gasolin until 1971. This is something you never see nowadays in an era of advertising agencies fighting with their budgets: that a single illustrator held the pen for 15 years. And this can be taken literally. Because it is now exactly 50 years since Bruno Bergner, with his pen, drew his first stippled pen-and-ink drawing of a Gasolin petrol station. This was the start of a long series of adverts that separated Gasolin's image from their competitors, right up until the 3500 Gasolin filling stations were taken over by Aral. And they make a contrast with Bergner's early work for Gasolin, whose potato-nosed men and naive 50's humour are reminiscent of Norman Rockwell.

The article goes on to describe his more modern, sophisticated style, and the slogans that went with it, and how they were the roots of the modern "my house, my car, my yacht"; describes his own car, how Aral took over, but Bergner found jobs for Texaco, BP,a Beiersdorf, did medical illustration, painted racing drivers, worked in oils, painted old vehicles, but the Gasolin years remained his best, ends mentioning how his son took over.

''Comment: it's clear that the article was written by Sylvia Lott with considerable input from talking to Bergner's son, but also to his former collaborator at Gasolin, their advertising manager. I don't know what other sources she may have found; I am assuming that while we cannot rely on what Bergner's son says (he's not independent), as screened through Sylvia Lott, his words take on a new independence based on her work as an independent journalist.'' Elemimele (talk) 18:30, 6 August 2021 (UTC)