Keep your babel fish handy today: our Graphical History Tour jets overseas to check up on what cartoonists in Germany were drawing a century ago. But first: a brief layover in the Netherlands!
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| "Labour en Het Communisme" by Leendert J. Jordaan in Notenkraker Amsterdam, Oct. 10, 1925 |
I came across this Dutch cartoon some time ago and saved it on the chance that I could use it here once October, 2025 came around. Now that it has, here it is.
Leendert Jordaan had been cartoonist for the satirical magazine Die Notenkraker (The Nutcracker) since 1909. His fiercely critical cartoons against Hitler would be published by the Netherlands’ underground press during World War II. Unlike Die Notenkraker, he survived the war, cartooning for Het Parool and Vrij Nederland until his retirement in 1961.
This got me wondering why I had not been finding any cartoons by the great Dutch cartoonist Louis Raemaekers in the U.S. press after the Armistice was signed, given how celebrated he had been stateside during the Great War. After all, he was still drawing cartoons up to and during World War II.
My guess is that in the years between the wars, isolationist sentiment in the U.S. meant that there was little interest in Raemaekers’s belligerently anti-German cartoons. Even in his home country, Raemaekers was unable to find a Dutch publisher for his 1927 collection of cartoons.
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| "Zeit-Ie-Wat" by Louis Raemaekers in De Telegraaf, Amsterdam, Oct. 15, 1925 |
So here is what I could find that Raemaekers was getting published in Amsterdam in those days (American audiences having enough trouble sussing bee's knees, spifflication, and gams without pondering the lingo of the guys and dolls overseas, too).
I will merely Yanksplain Raemaekers's joke by pointing out that "slang" is the Dutch word for "snake." Get it?
Moving on to Germany so that I may impress you with my ability to googlen sie deutsch:
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| "Souvenir de Locarno" by Thomas Theodor Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich/Stuttgart, Oct. 26, 1925 |
The major European news for the month was an international conference of continental leaders in Locarno, Switzerland. Over the next few months, conferees would hammer out a series of agreements, notably establishing new mutual borders of France, Belgium, and Germany, and admitting Germany into the League of Nations.
The cut lines in Thomas Heine's imagined photographs read:
"[Italy's Benito] Mussolini, who decided to smile occasionally at the conference."
"[Belgium's Émile] Vandervelde during a performance of The Marseillaise in the hotel .”
"[German Foreign Minister Gustav] Stresemann happily reports to [Chancellor Hans] Luther that he has been greeted by a French journalist."
"[France's Aristide] Briand striking a comma from the press release."
"[Britain's Foreign Secretary Sir Austen] Chamberlain choosing his tie."
Speaking of British decorum...
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| "Selbsterkenntnis" by Oskar Garvens in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Oct. 4, 1925 |
The cut line accompanying Garvens's cartoon identifies the caption as something David Lloyd George said during a debate on expanding the British fleet. If so, Lloyd George was quoting Rev. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones in a statement that has since been misconstrued as the Welsh pastor's characterization of the former Prime Minister.
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| "Helden des Sports" by Werner Hahmann in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Oct. 11, 1925 |
Garvens continued his concern for dark-skinned peoples a week later, citing a French report about an American sports personality who had joined the Franco-Spanish air attacks in Morocco, where Rif rebels had established an independent Islamic state.
The tiny paragraph explaining the cartoon doesn't cite the source of the French report or name the American jock, so I can't tell you with certainty who he was. A September feature article for the Philadelphia Public Ledger by Charles G. Reinhart, however, names ten American fighter pilots, most of them World War I veterans, flying for France. Reinhart's article mentions that one of them, Charles Wayne Kerwood ("Chuck"), was an amateur athlete in Philadelphia.
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| "Just Can't Keep Them Out of War" in Salt Lake Tribune, September 6, 1925. Kerwood is seated under the W in the headline. |
They weren't just flying reconnaissance, by the way. The Associated Press reported on September 11, 1925:
"The American aviators of the Sherifian esquadrille, in their bombing of Sheshuan, Riffian stronghold, are reliably reported to have killed more than 100 warriors. Their bombs also greatly damaged the Riffian military establishment and disorganized the troops concentrated there."
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| "Sie Hält Es Nicht Mehr Aus" by Werner Hahmann in Kladeradatsch, Berlin, Oct. 11, 1925 |
I haven't seen much celebration of the 140th birthday of the Statue of Liberty this month, but her 40th anniversary caught the eye of Kladderadatsch cartoonist Werner Hahmann. I would guess that he used the occasion to twit the United States over Prohibition, and New York City in particular for its air pollution.
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| "Polen und der Sicherheitspakt" by Arthur Krüger in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Oct. 4, 1925 |
The Danzig (Gdansk) Corridor, affording Poland access to the Baltic Sea but separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany, was a sore point for Germans between the wars. Krüger portrays the corridor as a knife in the shoulder of Michel, the cartoon personification of Germany; an unkempt Poland urges France to join in a security pact with the condition that the knife stays in place.
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| “Danzig” by Emil Weiss(?) in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Oct. 11, 1925 |
I’m sure this was funnier in the original German, but at least I shouldn’t have to explain what the cartoonist was trying to say.
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