Oldal 281 [281]
OCR
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, Europe, 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 aspirations of Bulgaria? Sources and Methods The objects of my analysis are caricatures from satirical magazines. The magazines 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 caricatures 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.
