German Cartoonists and the War

After last week's display of Louis Raemaekers cartoons, Spottenback Saturday now grants a few German cartoonists of World War I a chance to give their say. Except for the Gulbransson cartoon, these cartoons were reprinted in contemporary issues of Cartoons Magazine, published out of Chicago, which means they must have had to get past both German and U.S. wartime censors. As such, it is possible that they may not necessarily be the best examples of German wartime satire.

"The Blood Bath," From Der Brummer, Berlin, 1917

American troops joined the fighting in Europe in August of 1917, and patriotic fervor in the U.S. was at a peak, so the above cartoon very much misrepresents American popular feeling. The nations wading in the blood bath do not include Germany or its allies, which would have gotten this cartoon (and possibly its cartoonist) spiked.

German government dismissed "America's worthless assistance" to the Entente powers. Gustav Brandt here offers one idea to buttress the official government line, a fine example of the jugendstil of bold, flat areas of solid color that became popular among German cartoonists of the early 20th Century.

by Gustav Brandt in Kladderadatsch, Berlin

Better known west of the Maginot Line as art nouveau, jugendstil gets its name from Jugend, a cultural magazine published in Munich. Brandt himself (1861-1919) was at this time a long-established cartoonist whose earlier cartoons conformed to 19th Century tastes for greater detail and verisimilitude.

Here's another example of jugendstil, with a similar jab at Wilson as a money-grubbing capitalist, this time from a Simplicissimus cartoonist about Pope Benedict XV's peace proposal.

"Wilson's Answer" by Olaf Gulbransson in Simplicissimus, Munich, September 18, 1917

Another Kladderadatsich cartoonist lampoons the refusal of England's Lloyd George, the U.S.'s Wilson and France's Poincaré to consider German armistice proposals; each had declared that an end to Hohenzollern rule of Germany was a prerequisite condition for peace.

"We Will Never Negotiate" by unidentified cartoonist (Arthur Johnson?) in Kladderadatsch, Berlin

Speaking of Russia, Wilhelm Schulz in the brash satirical magazine Simplicissimus portrays Germany proffering a helping hand to its eastern neighbor. Russia, however, is threatened by its erstwhile allies.

"Helpless Russia" by Wilhelm Schulz in Simplicissimus, Munich, July 17, 1917

The U.S. was not the only Johnny-come-marching-lately into the Great War. In spite of its recent history with England and Russia, and the fact that its rival Japan had also sided with the Entente, China declared war on Germany in August, 1917.

"China" by W. A. Wellner in Lustige Blätter,  Berlin, January 1917

Given British and Russian imperialist designs on China, there was significant support in military and government circles for an alliance with Germany; one such supporter was former President/future Premier Sun Yat-sen. But the government of Duan Qirui viewed an Entente victory as more likely than a victory by the Central powers and hoped to gain territory at any post-war bargaining table. (They would be bitterly disappointed.)

"Tremble, Germania!" by Carl Olof Petersen in Lustige Blätter, Berlin, July 23, 1917

The sinking of the Athos I with 900 Chinese workers aboard by a German U-boat off the coast of Malta in February, 1917, furthermore, served as China's Lusitania moment. Yet if Germany was officially unconcerned with America's entry into the war, it was hardly any more worried about the Chinese navy.

Q Toon: Copulabis Impares

Can two celibate men share the Vatican without driving each other crazy?

Q Toon: Vale, Benny

The Associated Press may have made last week's cartoon moot, but as long as Benedict XIV doesn't change his mind about becoming Ex-Benedict I, I think this week's cartoon will stand.

As the cartoon states, Italian media have linked the Pope's abdication to his receiving a 300-page report on what is called the Vatileaks scandal, a report which will be turned over to whomever gets to be the next heir of St. Peter.  A report in La Repubblica alleges that Vatican clergy would meet clandestinely for partying and sexual encounters with men, some of them prostitutes, at such venues as a villa outside Rome, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlor in city center, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop. As relayed to us Anglophones by the Guardian of Great Britain:

The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair. ...According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising "two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red" had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope's successor upon his election. The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation".
In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.
It quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."

Panorama magazine followed up with NSFW video footage from their own undercover investigation:

The first [priest], a Frenchman about 35 years old, met the Panorama reporter Friday, July 2, at a gay party in a local neighborhood of Testaccio. In the evening, which included paid escort two men who danced naked with the priest and with other guests (then having sex with some of them), was also Charles, the second priest, who was aged between 45 and 50 years. The night ended at the home of Paul, where the reporter's gay accomplice asked the priest to wear the cassock and then had sex with him, filmed by hidden camera.
The next night, Paul and Charles made ​​an appointment with the Panorama reporter and his accomplice in the Gay Village in Rome, showing that they are comfortable in that environment. On this occasion, Charles was absent, having claimed several times to have had to do to avoid meeting those whom he had recognized as other priests or catechists. ... The next day, Sunday, July 4, Paul celebrated Mass on a table in his own home, in the presence of the Panorama reporter and his accomplice.

In this cartoon, Benedict takes the place of this guy at right in Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" on the Sistine Chapel ceiling:

It is said that this guy represents Despair, or a person who is surprised to discover that he didn't live as good a life as he perhaps thought he did. Of all the damned souls on the right side of the painting, he is perhaps the most sympathetically rendered, although I've never read anything to suggest that Michelangelo had a specific person in mind (unlike several other faces in the painting). You'll find him below and to the right of St. Bartholemew, whose flayed skin is said to represent Michelangelo himself.

My dilemma artistically was that Mr. Despair is surrounded by a whole lot of open space, so I ended up moving several elements of Michelangelo's masterpiece into the cartoon frame from other places in the painting. The boatload of damned souls, for example, is from well below the character whose left buttock appears on the right side of this detail image.

Benedict Who?

I went out this morning (and yesterday morning) in search of a newspaper with a good headline about Pope Benedict's abdication for my annual Year In Headlines photo, and  I didn't find one. (Oh, to have access to the Philadelphia, Tampa or Yankton, S.D. newspapers, alas.) The announcement came too late for yesterday morning's newspapers, and way too early for today's.

The local newspaper, the Racine Journal Times, chose to lead with a local story about a candidate for Superintendent of Schools. Since the abdication itself was yesterday's news, other area papers ran follow-up headlines. The Kenosha News, which can be counted on to run an old-fashioned bold, large, sans serif banner headline every day, had something along the lines of BENEDICT LED CHURCH IN CHANGING TIMES, which, while true of Benedict XVI, could also be said of every Pope since Leo X.

USA Today and the Milwaukee and Chicago papers lead with headlines looking beyond the resignation itself to speculation about what comes next. Again, true enough, but eleven months from now, you're not going to remember where you were when you found out that a new pope would lead the church at a crossroads.

Which left me with the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, whose headlines state the fact of the abdication plainly and succinctly, if not in a point size that will be legible at the upper left corner of the year-end photograph.

It's just too bad that I can't get the New York tabloids around here.

Q Cartoon: Those Darn Pedophile Priests

And if this turns out to have been a problem in the 1940's and '50's, we can always blame comic books and commies.

Trouble in the Catholic Church, Part XVI

NPR reported today that ten years after the Catholic Church in America was rocked by charges of pedophile priests whom the church quietly reassigned to other, unsuspecting parishes, Catholic bishops are -- believe it or not -- quietly reassigning defrocked pedophile priests to other, unsuspecting parishes. The NPR report described how one pedophile priest has been reassigned to congregations in several states and Peru since initial reports of his sexual abuse have come to light.

Priests accused of sexual abuse are supposed to be immediately suspended from their post, pending a church investigation of the charges. The boards of clergy and lay persons set up to review charges of sexual abuse by priests are, according to the report, appointed by bishops, who have been known to ignore the findings of such boards. Church officials have even refused to accept court judgments against pedophile priests as definitive.

I have to wonder how this compares with the process when a priest is accused of imbezzling from church funds.

~~
By the way, alert readers of a certain age may find an allusion to a song by Tom Lehrer in this week's cartoon.

Sneak peek for the Week

The topic for this week's Q Syndicate cartoon could hardly be about anything other than the latest charges in the neverending saga of pedophile Catholic priests -- in Ireland, Germany, and not far from me at a Wisconsin school for the deaf.

Several American cartoonists have weighed in on the scandal this week. The story made waves in Europe while most American cartoonists were dealing with the passage of Health Care Reform and its Republican/Teabagger wrath. Most American cartoons about the Catholic pedophile scandal have been pretty tame; not so with our European counterparts. (The link is to a page on Darryl Cagle's site; the cartoons may move around as more cartoons on the topic are added. As of this writing, there are about ten pages of Catholic Sex Scandal cartoons.)

My cartoon, while not drawn for the mainstream press, is still pretty tame -- especially compared with, say, Herbjørn Skogstad's. He doesn't have to worry about Bill Donohue suing his ass.

Marriage Equality in Portugal

Here's this week's Q Syndicate cartoon:

Paul Berge Q Syndicate Jan 13, 2010 EditorialCartoonists.com

An unexpected conundrum I encountered in drawing this cartoon was that I couldn't come up with any landmark or cultural stereotype to put in the background as cartoonese for "This is Portugal." Draw Big Ben in the background and men wearing bowlers, and everyone knows the cartoon is set in England. Draw the Eiffel Tower and some guy wearing a beret and a long-sleeved tee with bold horizontal stripes, and voilá! we're in France. 

There must be some castle or cathedral in Lisbon that all tourists are obliged to visit; but I couldn't name one, let alone expect readers to know what it looks like. Nor is there an identifiable Portuguese national costume or catch phrase. I bet you would be more likely to recognize their soccer uniform than their flag. (Did you even know that there is a second "u" in Portuguese?)