Oldal 116 [116]
OCR
114 Ágnes "Tamás referring to the Ottoman Empire as the "sick man of Europe". On the contrary, the Ottoman Empire is depicted as a more likely winner of the battle. Ihe entente soldiers and navy are drawn in miniature, as small men and ships, in order to underscore the contradiction between the powers of the two armies (K, April 4, 1915; BJ, May 2, 1915). Turkey was neutral during WWII, thus, this and similar metaphors no longer had relevance. Further figures of Ancient myths (Fortuna, Prometheus, Diogenes etc.) appeared primarily in Kladderadatsch between 1915 and 1918, and later in 1940 and 1942, although most of the characters occurred only in one or two caricatures in connection with a topical political or military event, and always with the aim that the original meaning of the myth degrades the enemy as well as the visual representation. Legends, Myths and Tales in Caricatures While caricaturists mocked the enemy by using Ancient myths to deliver their point, the usual way to represent the grandness of the German army was to illustrate it with elements of German legends or tales. One of the legendary heroes of German myth was Hermann, who led the German tribes against the Romans (9 AD), carrying them to victory in the Teutoburg forest. In the Kladderadatsch pictures, Hermann or other soldiers from German tribes encouraged the soldiers of the twentieth century to fight against their enemies, and Lurlei, a nymph, helped the soldiers to misguide the enemy with her beauty (K, August 23, 1914; K, November 19, 1916). ‘The caricatures depicted the fighting through biblical scenes as well. Both in Budapest and Berlin during WWI and WWII, the press used the motif of crucifixion, which appeared in connection with various events of the wars. Borsszem Jankó published a caricature in which the personification of Belgium, a young woman, is crucified, while two soldiers stand next to her with John Bull as Pilate, washing his hands (BJ, October 18, 1914). The caricature suggests that the enemy does not help its allies or—in contrast with the official propaganda of Great Britain, according to which Great Britain was the protector of small nations—any of the small states of Europe. Crucifixion was depicted more often during WWII than WWI. In one caricature, a woman and her child are crucified in Neville Chamberlain’s dream (K, November 12, 1939), symbolising British cruelty in the concentration camps of Transvaal (in reference to the Boer War). In later caricatures, the crucifixion motif is applied to British and French soldiers and the personifications of the neutral states. In the last year analysed in this chapter (i.e. 1944), the cross of the crucifixion changes its shape: it is made entirely out of Soviet symbols the sickle and hammer; on this cross Europe, the allegory of the territories liberated by the Red Army (Fig. 45), and the Statue of Liberty, a general symbol of liberty, are executed. The murder of Europe is represented in a caricature with the title “Judas’s Dream” in which the betrayers are Churchill, Roosevelt and the Jews (K, Janu
