St. Jakobfeier 1911 – “Zweiter Basler Blumen-Tag” A Rare Commemorative Swiss Poster of Heroism, Honour, and Red Roses in Battle RE485642

This is a poster of savage splendour and national myth writ in ink and flame. Here, we behold the 1911 Swiss commemorative poster for the St. Jakobfeier, an annual celebration in Basel honouring the Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs (1444)—a near-legendary moment of Swiss defiance and martyrdom.

Designed by Graphisches Anstalt W. Wassermann, this poster is a glorious fusion of Jugendstil dynamism, medieval horror, and patriotic ritual. 

🛡️ St. Jakobfeier 1911 – “Zweiter Basler Blumen-Tag”

A Rare Commemorative Swiss Poster of Heroism, Honour, and Red Roses in Battle

🎨 Visual Description – Where Roses Bloom, and Blood is Remembered

The scene is set with mythic violence: a Swiss knight, wounded but unbroken, rises from a tangle of red roses, thrusting a broken spear at a mounted Burgundian rider, whose horse—cloaked in a jester’s coat of red and black checks—looms like a beast from a danse macabre.

The rider slumps backward, struck, his banner dissolving into smoke, his helm trailing blood-red plume and tongue. The combat is almost grotesque in beauty—stylised, angular, primal.

Beneath them, a field of red roses swells and surges, forming a great white cross—the Swiss national symbol—rendered not in flag’s cloth but in threaded floral tapestry, detailed like lace and sorrow. Within the cross, in Gothic blackletter, the poster reads:

Zweiter Basler Blumenzug: St. Jakobsfeier 1911

Above, in fiery medieval script:

26. Aug. 1444
The date of the original battle—etched in Swiss blood.

This is not merely a celebration. It is a sanctification of sacrifice.

🖨️ Your Reproduction – Sacred Paper, Secular Fire

Now available as a premium-quality fine art reproduction:

• Printed on 200gsm heavyweight archival paper – noble, weighty, and tactile

• Silk semi-gloss finish – to enrich the vermilion roses and carbon-black detail

• Humidity & scratch resistant – a piece built to last like legend

• Produced in England, reverently restored and masterfully presented

⚔️ Who Is This For?

• Collectors of rare Swiss graphic design or military ephemera

• Admirers of Jugendstil, gothic type, and martial myth

• Patriots of purpose, curators of courage

• Designers seeking art that howls and honours simultaneously

It is more than historical—it is ritual on paper.

🌹 FINAL WORD

“This is not a poster. It is a battlefield pressed into roses and resurrected in ink. A nation does not remember with silence—it remembers with splendour.”
— David Harrison

👉 Add to cart and let this crusade of memory find its home upon your wall.
Because valour, once given, must always be seen.