Bidspirit auction | Issue of the Antisemitic Magazine

Issue of the Antisemitic Magazine Die Brennessel - March 1933 - Antisemitic Cartoons Heralding the Beginning of the Nazi Era - Issue of the antisemitic magazine Die Brennessel (”The Nettle”), dated March 8, 1933 - just three days after the last general Reichstag elections (March 5, 1933), in which the Nazi Party consolidated its power and paved the way for a full dictatorship. Published by the official publishing house of the Nazi Party, Verlag Frz. Eher Nachf. G.m.b.H., Munich. Antisemitic cartoons heralding the beginning of the Nazi era. The front cover depicts a sturdy man in the uniform of the Labor Service, seen from behind with his spade resting on his shoulder as he looks out toward an open landscape. The caption reads: ”Jetzt beginnt die Arbeit!”  -  ”Now the work begins!” The issue opens with an antisemitic poem referring to the Jewish businessmen Sklarek and Barmat (”Sie ließen von Barmats sich Zahnstocher schenken / und Kleider von Sklareks...”). The poem accuses left-wing politicians of accepting favors and gifts from ”corrupt” Jewish financiers, portraying them as having enriched themselves at the expense of the German people while filling their pockets with bribes. The interior pages contain cartoons intended to vilify the Nazi Party's political opponents - above all Communists, Socialists (Marxists), and Jews - just days after the Nazis' official accession to power in March 1933. The principal cartoon bears the title ”Rosie Möller, the Honest Austrian Marxist, at a Fish Dinner” and depicts Rosie Möller, a figure associated with the Austrian socialist left, dining with an elderly man portrayed through prominent stereotypical antisemitic features, including a large hooked nose, thick lips, elegant attire, and a signet ring. In the mocking caption beneath the illustration, her companion says, ”For heaven's sake, Roserl, when you put the knife into your mouth like that, I'm always afraid you'll cut yourself!” She dismissively replies, ”Well then, I’ll simply say once again that a National Socialist attacked me!” The issue employs the false claim that reports of Nazi violence in the streets were fabricated. At the center of the page appears an antisemitic poem explicitly mentioning the names Sklarek and Barmat, Jewish businessmen involved in financial fraud and corruption scandals during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and early 1930s, in which politicians of the Social Democratic Party were also implicated. The poem alleges that millions flowed into the pockets of Sklarek and Barmat while the starving people paid the price. The right-hand column directly attacks the prominent liberal British newspaper The Manchester Guardian, accusing it of unfair and hostile criticism of Germany regarding its treatment of minorities and churches in Poland, as part of the regime's effort to portray the foreign press reporting on developments in Germany as hostile and engaged in spreading false atrocity propaganda against the country. Further on appears a sharply satirical political cartoon by the illustrator ”Till, ” under the title ”A Heroic Idea” (Heroischer Einfall). The illustration depicts a crumbling and fractured ancient Greek-style building bearing the sign ”Dichter-Academie” (”Academy of Poets”), representing the prestigious Department of Poetry and Literature of the Prussian Academy of Arts (Preußische Akademie der Künste). Inside the collapsing structure sit several of the leading writers and intellectuals of the Weimar Republic, engaged in an anxious discussion around a table. Outside the building sits, isolated and dejected, the renowned German-Jewish writer and playwright Ludwig Fulda, one of the founders of the Academy and one of its central figures. At the bottom of the page appears the quotation mockingly attributed to him: ”...Ludwig Fulda: 'Halt, ich habe eine Idee: Auch wir werden nur der Gewalt weichen.'”  -  ”...Ludwig Fulda: 'Stop, I have an idea: We too shall yield only to force!'”. The cartoon documents the historical events of February and March 1933: the Nazi ”purge” of the Prussian Academy of Arts immediately after their rise to power. The new regime forced prominent members such as Heinrich Mann, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Ludwig Fulda to resign or leave the institution. The propaganda on this page ridicules liberal and Jewish intellectuals, portraying their ”resistance” and dramatic declarations as pathetic, detached, and utterly powerless in the face of the new political reality and the irresistible physical force of the Third Reich. (By the beginning of the summer of 1938, one quarter of Fulda's assets had been confiscated. After Kristallnacht in November 1938, he was required to pay the Judenvermögensabgabe (Jewish Property Levy). Despite an affidavit from his son and a financial guarantee from a friend in New York, his application for a U.S. entry visa was denied on the grounds that the immigration quota had been exhausted.