# The Lincoln Memorial on a 1952 American poster printed in Copenhagen This black-and-white poster of the Lincoln Memorial was printed in Copenhagen by Dyva & Jeppesen for the U.S. Information Service and dated 1 January 1952 in the National Archives file. It quotes the memorial's inscription and adds a Danish caption on Lincoln, the Civil War, and national unity (NAID 6948876). - Home - Archive - The Lincoln Memorial on a 1952 American poster printed in Copenhagen USA poster, Lincoln Memorial, Washington (Danish poster distributed in Copenhagen) The Lincoln Memorial on a 1952 American poster printed in Copenhagen 1952 USIS Copenhagen poster: a photograph of the Lincoln Memorial with its inscription and a Danish caption on Lincoln and the Union. NARA NAID 6948876. ## Techniques named on the archive record TransferGlittering generalities DateJanuary 1, 1952Made byU.S. Information Agency (USIS Copenhagen), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East series; printer Dyva & JeppesenMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationNARANAID 6948876; Record Group 306SourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), RG 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work; NARA RG 306) U.S. Information Agency / Department of State, 1952. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 6948876, 306-PPB-55). Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records. Full record at propagandaarchive.org This black-and-white poster of the Lincoln Memorial was printed in Copenhagen by Dyva & Jeppesen for the U.S. Information Service and dated 1 January 1952 in the National Archives file. It quotes the memorial's inscription and adds a Danish caption on Lincoln, the Civil War, and national unity (NAID 6948876). ## What the poster prints A photograph fills most of the sheet: the seated Lincoln in the memorial's hall, with a single small visitor at the right for scale and the carved inscription on the wall above. Below the picture, in Danish, a short paragraph explains who Lincoln was and translates the inscription. IN THIS TEMPLE AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS ENSHRINED FOREVER U.S.A. Monumentet i Washington, D. C. for Abraham Lincoln, De Forenede Staters præsident 1861–65. I Lincolns præsidentperiode udkæmpedes den blodige borgerkrig mellem nord- og sydstaterne, men han arbejdede utrætteligt på stridens bilæggelse og nationens enhed. […] DYVA & JEPPESEN A/S · KØBENHAVN FRAME transcription; the English inscription is photographed on the memorial wall, and the Danish is the printed caption. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA RG 306, 306-PPB-55, NAID 6948876. The archive's machine translation of the Danish, not checked by a fluent reader: during Lincoln's presidency "the bloody civil war between the northern and southern states was fought, but he worked tirelessly for the settlement of the conflict and the unity of the nation." ## What it sells There is no enemy on this sheet and no request. It is a picture of an American monument with a caption, part of a USIS series that also includes the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and the Empire State Building. The archive tags it with transfer and glittering generalities: the dignity of the memorial and of Lincoln is offered to Danes as a picture of the country itself. Of all the things a government could choose to say about the United States, this is one of the more honest. The caption names the civil war plainly and calls it bloody. It does not mention slavery, which a fuller account of Lincoln would, and a careful reader can note that gap without discarding the rest. ## Who issued it The record names the U.S. Information Service in Copenhagen, part of the information program that became the U.S. Information Agency, with printing by a Danish firm. The sheet says "U.S.A." but names no agency, and the archive classes the source as blurred. A Danish reader would know the poster was about America; the sheet does not say the American government paid for it. For the wider effort to reach European audiences in these years, see the archive's studies of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Crusade for Freedom. For an Asian edition of the same program's work on liberty, see We Want / We Do Not Want. ## Sources - FRAME object record, "USA poster, Lincoln Memorial, Washington (Danish poster distributed in Copenhagen)," 1 January 1952. U.S. Information Agency (USIS Copenhagen); printer Dyva & Jeppesen. - U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, 306-PPB-55, NAID 6948876, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/usa-poster-lincoln-memorial-danish-1952/