[3 in 6 vol.] German Political Satires From the Reformation to the Second World War. Pt. 1: 1500-1848 Commentary + Plates. Pt. 2: 1849-1918 Commentary + Plates. Pt. 3: 1918-1945 Commentary + Plates.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Minimal staining on bottom edge or binding, overall very good and clean. / Minimale Anschmutzung auf Fu�chnitt oder Einband, insgesamt sehr gut und sauber. - From Preface 1: The present volumes constitute Part I of a survey of German political satires and cartoons which was begun over a decade ago. The first part to appear was Part III, which was published in 1985 and was concerned with the period between 1918 and 1945. Part II came out in 1987 and drew on material published between 1849 and 1918. Part I deals with a much longer period of time and seeks to trace the history of pictorial political satire from its origins shortly after the invention of printing down to the Revolution of 1848. The intention was not to evolve a theory of satire or to study stylistic devices or reproduction techniques, but rather to offer reproductions of the originals themselves together with a factual commentary setting the individual satires in the context of their day. I have, however, written a short Introduction to Part I, in which I attempt to ventilate some of the more general problems associated with graphic satire. Parts II and III were largely concerned with cartoons and allegories drawn from satirical magazines. In these magazines, the cartoon was part of a journalistic product that included illustrated jokes, anecdotes, investigative reports, and serious literary texts. In Part I, though I have included a number of frontispiece illustrations from the sixteenth century, we are concerned essentially with flysheets that were published independently and sold in printers� shops or hawked around the inns and marketplaces by itinerant pedlars. The independent status of these prints gives them a heightened historical importance when compared to their latterday descendants. They are not part of a �package deal� that included material extraneous to themselves, a sort of visual garnish that might or might not be important in the context of other items. They were bought for themselves alone, and they dealt with issues that the publisher and his public felt to be of compelling urgency. Hence � at least in part � the sporadic pattern of publication. The second important point connected with the material collected in Part I is that for most of the period under review, pictures were still relatively scarce and therefore had an impact that is difficult for twentieth-century readers to imagine, bombarded as they are by visual images wherever they turn. As in previous volumes, I have in mind primarily English-speaking readers, who perhaps have little German but who wish to understand how Germans saw their own history as it evolved or are perhaps interested in the political cartoon as a phenomenon of European cultural history. The sheer length of the commentaries with which early satirists sought to explain and drive home the message of their allegories has meant that I have in many cases not been able to publish a translation complete down to the last line of the text. I have, however, provided lengthy renderings of the more relevant parts. Here, I have regarded the linguistic accuracy of my versions as being the prime requirement, though I also hope that they will convey something of the � generally unsophisticated � spirit of the original doggerel. As in the earlier volumes, I have � within limits � not scrupled to reproduce repetitive material where this reflected the pattern of production. Equally, I have included an occasional non-satirical print, where this was appropriate, as a foil to the satires themselves. In the earlier period, the relative scarcity of material has meant that the prints treated represent a much more comprehensive cross-section of what is actually extant. By the 1848 Revolution, however, and indeed at the time of the Thirty Years War, the volume of production was such that one could fill all the space available with the material extant, and a quite rigorous selection had in consequence to be imposed on the material from these periods. In the established pattern I have set out only to reproduce material that has been preserved for us in genuine originals, and have supplied a note of its present location. In only one case have I departed from this rule: I have been unable to establish the whereabouts of some of the material published by F. Schulze in his Die deutsche Napoleon-Karikatur, Weimar, 1916, and for the sake of completeness felt it right to reproduce �at second hand� some of the prints, together with an appropriate note. - From Preface 2: The material here treated is drawn from the principal satirical journals that sprang up � partly in imitation of foreign models � in the wake of the Revolution of 1848. The tradition thus established was to show remarkable vitality in the later nineteenth century: Ludwig Hollweck in his Karikaturen (Munich, 1973) lists over 70 titles, and his survey is by no means exhaustive, being confined to journals published in Munich. Not all such journals were primarily political, of course. Many, like Fliegende Bl�er, eschewed political comment except in times of great national excitement. All too often, these were short-lived publications � only Fliegende Bl�er and Kladderadatsch survived the three-score and ten years of our period. Many of the lesser, ephemeral publications never reached the sanctuary of the library shelves, or some only in broken runs or individual numbers. Even so, the sheer size of what has survived defies comprehensive treatment. Faced with such a mass of material, an editor can do no more than make a personal selection, while striving conscientiously to resist choices that might fairly be regarded as idiosyncratic. Certainly, no one is more aware than the present editor how much material that ideally should have been included has been discarded out of considerations of space. - From Preface 3: The present volumes, comprising Part III, deal with the period of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. The material is drawn from the principal satirical journals of those years; for reasons of continuity I have resisted the temptation to diversify my sources further by the frequent introduction of new and often ephemeral journals or to take account of the still embryonic use of the cartoon in daily newspapers such as Vorw�s and V�lkischer Beobachter. It seemed more meaningful to show how the established vehicles of German political satire and humour responded to changing circumstances in the Weimar Republic and �insofar as they were not suppressed in 1933�survived as �coordinated� mouthpieces of officially approved propaganda under Hitler. In spite of the generosity of the publishers, it was clearly not possible to reproduce and comment on more than a small portion of the material available. �Wahl ist Qual� says the German proverb and, like Flaubert with his celebrated comma, I have spent many a morning inserting a cartoon only to spend the afternoon taking it out again! As a selection from a large mass of material, the cartoons I have finally included represent a personal choice with all that this implies. I do not flatter myself I have achieved complete objectivity, but I have tried honestly to include as wide a spectrum of German political opinion as possible from the Spartakist Left in Die Pleite to the extremist fringe of the NSDAP in Der St�rmer. This concern, however, has been vitiated by the relatively short-lived and irregular nature of most left-wing periodicals compared with those on the Right. Similarly, in the twelve years of National Socialist government, the only journals which continued to publish no longer printed independent satires, but simply echoed in graphic form the often rather monotonous official views of a fascist state. Within these limits, I have tried to reflect all major developments. I did not feel it right or meaningful, however, to divide the space available to me equally between the twenty-six years covered. All years are important in politics, but some are more important than others, and it seemed appropriate that the German sense of outrage at the terms of the Peace of Versailles, for instance, should be given much more space than, say, the question of Battle-Cruiser A or the problem of South Tirol. Nor can in every case the magnitude of a crisis be reflected in the volume of publicity it receives: Hitler�s engineering of the Austrian or Czech crises in 1938 did not allow satirists time to produce a host of cartoons on the subject! On the other hand, where it seemed important, I have not eschewed vain repetition, but have made a point of reproducing cartoons that merely restate established themes in different terms (e.g., the distrust of political parties in the Weimar Republic or the Third Reich�s hostility to Soviet Russia or the Jews). ISBN 9780527198398