In the fall of 1966, the McCann Erickson agency was commissioned for a new advertising campaign for the West German state-owned railway. The chosen message presented the train as an efficient and punctual means of public transport, regardless of the weather or other external factors. Thus, they produced a series of posters showing an electric locomotive going through a snowstorm accompanied by the slogan: Everybody talks about the weather. We don’t.
In 1968, artists Jürgen Holtfreter and Ulrich Bernhardt launched their version of the poster with the faces of Marx, Engels, and Lenin to raise funds for the legal expenses that the Student Federation members were facing after being prosecuted for protesting. This federation dissolved in 1970 and some of its members joined the armed group Red Army Faction (RAF).


This piece reproduces the original Holtfreter and Bernhardt poster, respecting all the deterioration it has suffered over time. The engraving made on the methacrylate collects the relationship of maximum and minimum temperatures during the 708 days that showed the judicial process against Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe: the leaders of the first generation of the RAF. During those days the prisoners remained in total isolation and, therefore, oblivious to the weather.