A Selection of Cartoons from Puck

Chapter 35: THE SITUATION IN GERMANY.

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About This Book

This collection gathers satirical pictorial essays and caricatures originally published in a humor magazine, pairing sharp visual exaggeration with allegorical scenes to comment on political and social issues of the late nineteenth century. An introductory essay explains the artist’s German-influenced approach that fuses caricature and cartooning into dramatic parables, and the plates reproduce large, detailed cartoons with accompanying captions and an index to aid interpretation. The volume emphasizes visual wit, topical parody, and the interplay of character drawing and symbolic narrative.

THE SITUATION IN GERMANY.

PUCK, February 2nd, 1887.

Elsewhere in these pages an attempt has been made to give some idea of the character and significance of “German Michel.” This cartoon, which appeared at the time of the Boulangist excitement in France, shows how Michel’s native shrewdness and stolidity rendered him proof against the ingenious, but far from ingenuous, attempts of Prince Bismarck to make capital for the War Department out of the disturbances in France. The sturdy toiler, overworked and overtaxed already, showed not only a frank unwillingness to add to his burdens, but bore himself toward the princes and potentates that were set above him with a certain self-confident freedom of attitude which had not been his wont of old time.

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