In the run-up to the annual bonus for 1909, the decision was made to give each of the folders to a single artist of the group. The portfoli, which still contains three graphic works got a wrapper that was produced by another artist of the group. The artists followed a rotation principle: the one who designed the cover for a colleague in one year makes works for the portfolio the following year. The new design of the cover, in each case made by a second artist, also emphasizes, in addition to their obvious value, a sort of advertising quality: The cover graphic precedes the following three sheets like an advertising poster. All covers have the distinctive lettering "Brücke" in common, as well as the year of publication, and the name of the artist representing the content. With the 1909 portfolio the classic form of the annual "Brücke" portfolios had been attained. In 1909 Kirchner designed the portfolio for the works of Schmidt-Rottluff. The massive, striking portrait head of Schmidt-Rottluff appears like a personal homage and, instead of the somber black in the white cut, now glows from the vermilion. The three reproduced paintings after Schmidt-Rottluff on the left edge of the picture show his important themes: landscape, portrait and nude. The three graphic sheets, two lithographs with a portrait of Heckel and a view of the "Berliner Straße" in Dresden, as well as a drypoint etching "Altdresdner Häuser", show Schmidt-Rottluff's knowledge of the graphic means of expression: how he spontaneously draws on the litho stone, such as the portrait with swelling or tapering brushstrokes, or the furious, condensed street perspective, or how he digs the old Dresden walls into the copper plate line by line.
The group expands the annual bonus, which was actually dedicated to Schmidt-Rottluff, with the sheet "Mädchen und Tod im Wald" (Girl and Death in the Forest) by Axel Gallen-Kallela, a special case in context of the annual portfolios. After the other "Brücke" artists had already asked the Finnish painter for a contribution to the 1908 several times, he provided the printing block belonging to this woodcut around the turn of the year 1908/09, which, however, he had already completed in 1895. When Erich Heckel then produced the corresponding prints, Gallen-Kallela refused to complete them with his signature, which was considered essential by the "Brücke" artists. Together with the fact that the Finnish painter contributed a print that was not explicitly created for the annual edition, and which was already stylistically outdated at this point, this is an artistic misunderstanding. [MvL]