Oldal 114 [114]
OCR
112 Ágnes "Tamás primarily through the successful general Paul von Hindenburg and his glorious predecessor Otto von Bismarck (K, August 13, 1916). These symbolic figures and heroic soldiers disappeared in the caricatures from WWH, when the only method of propaganda was mockery of the enemy. Ancient Gods Employed in War Propaganda Since the object of the present analysis is wartime caricatures, it is not surprising that we find the ancient personifications of war and peace, such as Mars the god of war, Pax the goddess of peace, and the Christian symbols of peace (the angel of peace and the dove) in the analysed caricatures. Mars was very popular in Kladderadatsch in 1916-17 (Fig. 43), and later, in 1939, many drawings depict Jewish journalists awakening the sleeping Mars. In 1940 the victorious Mars is depicted (K, December 1, 1940) and in 1941 the love between Mars and Venus appears (K, December 28, 1941). The male and female characters were personified by males, for instance by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, or by Churchill and Josef Stalin,° while ‘the Jews’ also sometimes appeared as a character in a mocking love scene. Magyarsdg depicted the bloodthirsty Mars, connecting the destruction caused by him with the money and war profits of the Jews (M, August 15, 1941). Finally, Mars appeared as death itself in both magazines (the Hungarian magazine copied the idea of the caricature from Kladderadatsch: K, May 28, 1944; M, July 16, 1944). The depiction of Pax became more and more popular between 1915 and 1918 in Kladderadatsch, because of the German peace offer (K, December 12, 1916) and the peace negotiations with Russia (1917); however, no similar tendency can be observed in Borsszem Janké. The symbols of peace appeared in two contexts: the enemy stands in the way of peace and wants to continue the cruel war against the will of Germany (BJ, February 13, 1916; K, January 2, 1916), and Woodrow Wilson can be seen as a false angel of peace (Fig. 44; K, December 3, 1916). In such caricatures Wilson has many weapons and loans money to the entente states in order to continue the war (thus, not truly wanting to arrive at peace). Both the German and the Hungarian propaganda celebrated the peace of Brest-Litovsk (1918): the angel of peace finally found peace (BJ, March 10, 1918; K, January 13, 1918). Nevertheless, at the end of the war, Pax was depicted very differently: after signing the truce in Compiegne (1918), “the fair angel of peace” trampled a German soldier to death. In this caricature the personification of peace no longer has angelical features, it is more similar to a creature from hell (K, November 24, 1918). During WWII the symbols of peace disappeared from the pages of the analysed magazines, although it has to be borne in mind that the analysed papers were not published in the last year of the war. The caricaturists expressed the choice ° The effeminisation of an internal or external enemy is an old and often practiced strategy of mockery in caricatures.
