1933: The Free Peoples of Europe!

 

Another art appreciation post. This one took a bit for  me to interpret its meaning. This is The Free Peoples of Europe! Published in January 1933 in the newspaper Der Wahre Jacob (The True Jacob) by Willibald Krain. 

The sketch style caught my attention and I was reasonably sure what the words said, but I had to look into the author and the publication to make sure. I am fairly confident that the intended meaning is a critique of the "Dicatatorship of Capital" concept. The women are the peoples of Europe all of whom are tied to factory chimneys, to me this represents how capitalism dominates people through work even if their nations are politically free.

Here's my reasoning.

The True Jacob was a satirical biweekly publication affiliated with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and was published from 1879 til February 1933, meaning this appeared in one of the last editions.

January 1933 was when Hitler became Chancellor and it wasn't long before the publications of enemy political organisations were banned.

Willibald Krain was born in 1886 and died in 1945. He spent most of his artistic career as a press cartoonist working for liberal and socialist publications. When the Nazis took control of Germany he found himself under suspicion and banned from working. 

In 1944 he found work again producing antisemitic cartoons for the satirical publication Kladderadatsch which at the time was a far right publication, ironic since it was founded in 1848 by a Jewish merchant family and had been a liberal paper before being sold to an industrialist after the First World War. It ceased publication in 1944 as Germany's deteriorating position throttled the economy.

Willibald Krain again out of work was conscripted into the Volkssturm (People's Storm) a militia made up of old men, young boys and war wounded. Krain did not see combat but was captured by the Soviet Army, during transport he was shot and died from his injury shortly after release.

July 1925, The 1st International Workers Olympiad in Frankfurt am Main

This is an example of the material he produced for the SPD. The Workers Olympiad was a series of left wing alternatives to Olymlpics which was seen as too nationalistic.

People in a hotel, a new novel by Vicki Baum

This is an advertisement for a novel by Vicki Baum. The novel was published in 1929 and released in English under the title Grand Hotel, which was optioned for a film in 1932.