The Odds and Ends of March

We’ll return for The Fall of Indochina, Part Thieu, next week; but first, our Graphical History Tour steps back a further fifty years with a warning that March is almost over.

"This Is April First Anyhow" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, April 1, 1925

President Woodrow Wilson had broken off relations with Russia immediately after the Bolshevik October Revolution in 1917, and that policy continued under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover in spite of commercial ties between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. At issue, beside the communist form of government, was the Soviet renunciation of international debts incurred by the tsarist regime.

"Anti-League-ville" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Collier's, April 4, 1925

"Ding" Darling's cartoon will serve to segue from Russia to Germany, which held presidential elections one hundred years ago today.

"Um die Meisterschaft von Deutschland" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, March 29, 1925

The first round of presidential elections was held on Sunday, March 29 because of the death of President Friedrich Ebert a month earlier.

Johnson pictures seven candidates in this cartoon. The top row are the mainstream party candidates: Karl Jarres (German People's/DVP and German National People's/DNVP), Wilhelm Marx (Center/DZ), Willy Hugo Hellpach (German Democratic/DDP), Otto Braun (Social Democratic/SPD).

Below are the extremist parties: Erich Ludendorf (German People's Freedom/DVFP), and Ernst Thälmann (Communist/KPD). Ludendorf, a German army commander, was prominent in the attempted Nazi putsches of 1920 and 1923, and a firm believer that Germany's defeat in World War I was due to a conspiracy of domestic Jews, Freemasons, and Marxists.

"In der Reichs-Entbindungsanstalt" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, April 5, 1925

With seven national candidates, none emerged with a majority of the votes on March 30, setting up a second round election a month later. Under the German electoral system, any of the first round candidates — even new candidates — could compete in the second round, and whichever candidate received a plurality of the votes in the second round would be declared the winner.

The Center Party renominated Marx for the second round, and he received the support of the DDP and SPD as well. The DVP's executive committee unanimously endorsed Jarres, but he withdrew in favor of Paul von Hindenburg, despite his having twice declined to run. Convinced by Alfred von Tirpitz to change his mind, and after seeking the approval of former Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzollern, von Hindenburg announced his candidacy on April 8. He also won the enthusiastic endorsement of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP), a breakaway faction of the Center Party.

"Wilhelm Still Has Some Friends" by Wm. A. Rogers in New York World by March 31, 1925

William Rogers probably made up those four votes for the former Kaiser Wilhelm in his cartoon. It's hard to imagine the deposed emperor putting his name forward for popular election.

The actual results were a resounding defeat for the Fascist DVFP's Ludendorf, the last-place finisher, who thereafter withdrew from politics. 

"Des Feldherrn Abgesang" by Ernst Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Apr. 20, 1925

I strongly suspect that in breaking up the German word "verlassen" in the dialogue, Schilling was making a pun of some sort. If so, there is a vulgar insult "aase" which can mean "bitch" or "swine." (Update below*)

Turning back to America:

"Unbegrenzte Möglichkeiten" by Werner Hahmann, in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Apr. 5, 1925

Don't be fooled by the printer's choice of colors in Werner Hahmann's cartoons (or a certain saint's day this past week) into mistaking the character on the right is supposed to be Irish. I believe that the hatpin signifies that she is supposed to be a feminist, a harridan in men's clothing.

The six-pointed stars on Uncle Sam's suitcoat are no accident, by the way.

An explanatory note above Hahmann's cartoon states that moves to prohibit the import, production, and sale of tobacco were gaining popularity in the U.S. It is true that there were anti-tobacco activists agitating on the apparent success of the temperance movement, but they were a long way from convincing elected representatives in government to join their cause. 

Tobacco interests weren't giving up without a fight; why do you think that everybody in motion pictures of the era happened to be smokers?

"That New York Mastodon Find" by Orville P. Williams for New York Evening Graphic, by March 31, 1925

Construction crews unearthed a two-foot long jaw bone of a mastodon and other bone fragments during excavation for an apartment building at #2 Seaman Street in Manhattan on March 25.

The beast was believed to have been a baby of the species, but was still considerably larger than a donkey. The first bones in this find were from the mastodon's three-foot-long jaws, including seven of its six-inch-long teeth. At least three of the teeth were seized by passers-by, although one of them was eventually returned to the American Museum of Natural History.

Williams used the find to point out the Democratic Party's misfortunes since Woodrow Wilson's presidency. The Democrats' years in the wilderness would continue as long as Republicans could point to a strong economy and a soaring stock market.

Which brings us full circle.

"The April Fool Pocketbook" by Tom Foley in Minneapolis Daily Star, April 1, 1925

_____________

* My friend Winfried Schmidpott tells me that the dialogue in Schilling’s cartoon references a Bavarian-Austrian song. You can hear Arnold Schoenberg's arrangement of it here.