August Sander's epochal cycle "People of the 20th Century" is considered one of the most significant works in the history of art photography from the last century. Sander's photographic typology of German society between the Weimar Republic and the post-war years not only fascinated artists, writers, and philosophers of his time but also served as an important reference for the artistic self-understanding of contemporary photographers. In the context of the collection of Lothar Schirmer and the publishing program of Schirmer/Mosel, the group of around 80 works by Sander, consisting of portraits, landscapes, and cityscapes, acquired in the early 1970s, forms the actual historical focus from which the intensive, decades-long collaboration with photographers such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth, or Cindy Sherman has developed.