Oldal 281 [281]
278
Ágnes Tamás
From Allies to Enemies: Ihe Two Balkan
Wars (1912—1913) in Caricatures!
The twentieth-century history of central and eastern, as well as southeastern, Eu¬
rope, or sometimes that of the whole continent (if one thinks about World War
I), was often decisively influenced by crises in the Balkans, therefore, making it
important to analyze the various visual representations of the events of the first and
second Balkan wars. These two wars influenced greatly the formation of nation
states in the Balkans, since it was during these two wars that the borders of the
states in the Balkans changed and Albania came into being. The Balkan League
(Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece) fought the First Balkan War (October
8, 1912, to May 30, 1913) for the independence of the Balkan nations from the
Ottoman Empire and for increasing or uniting their territories, while the Second
Balkan War (June 29, 1913, to August 8, 1913) was waged against Bulgaria, a
former ally.? The historical situation in which Bulgaria would quickly become
an enemy of Serbia makes the analysis of drawings from this period even more
interesting. I ask the following questions: Were the symbols of enemy new in the
case of Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War or did caricaturists employ the
allegories of previous enemies (for example, the Ottoman Empire) for Bulgaria?
Could the caricaturists make up individual motives for the new enemy? With
which depictions did the Austro-Hungarian satirical magazines react to the new
historical situation, since the Austro-Hungarian monarchy encouraged the aspira¬
tions of Bulgaria?
Sources and Methods
The objects of my analysis are caricatures from satirical magazines. The maga¬
zines serving as the source of the caricatures are the following: Borsszem Jankó
(Peppercorn Jack), Der Floh (The Flea), Vrac Pogadac (Prophet Magician), and Brka
(Moustached); the caricatures are taken from the period of the First Balkan War,
the month between the two Balkan wars (June 1913), and the Second Balkan
War until August 1913. One can generally say of European satirical magazines
that they reacted very sensibly to political events; therefore, the analyzed carica¬
tures can be easily connected to contemporary political events. Thus, if we look
through caricatures about the Balkan wars in chronological order, all of the most
! I would like to thank Péter Heinermann and Stefania Matyko, for helping me in the Matica Srpska
Library in Novi Sad, and Csaba Göncöl for translating Serbian captions.
? See Vocelka 1993: 271-273; Pavlowitch 2002: 79-92; Demeter 2007; Sundhaussen 2007: 210-221.