Verlag Ullstein, Berlin. 128 pp. 28.2 x 22.5 cm. 92 plates in gravure printing after photographs by E.O. Hoppé. Introduction by Bruno H. Burgel. Original cloth binding and reversible dust jacket with photographic reproductions (outside) and graphical colour illustrations (inside). First edition. - Dust jacket with significant traces of use.
"Deutsche Arbeit and Eisen und Stahl emanate from the period in German photography when the modernist approach was at its hight, and the German economy and industry were in a desperate situation prior to the fall of the Weimar government and the triumph of the Nazis. [...] Emil Otto Hoppé, a banker turned photographer, illustrated one of the books in Ernst Wasmuth's well-known Orbis Terrarum series. Deutsche Arbeit is not an Orbis Terrarum book, but shares a similar design, the sepia-toned plates of Hoppé's photographs being immediately distinctive. [...] Deutsche Arbeit bursts into full, flamboyant modernist mode in the shape of its jacket - not once, but twice, for this is one of the few photobooks to feature a reversible jacket. On one side is one of Hoppés more dynamic photographs, a close-up of a ship's propeller, while the other side features a striking graphic design of belching factory chimneys." (cit. Martin Parr, Gerry Badger, The photobook: A history, Volume I, London et al. 2004, ill. p. 125)