ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

L'Allemagne "victorieuse" (Victorious Germany)

Faivre, Abel, 1867-1945 · 1914

L'Allemagne "victorieuse" (Victorious Germany)
Abel Faivre's ink line drawing satirizes German military ambitions at the outbreak of World War I. A German soldier, viewed from behind, distributes rations to a crowd of thin, hungry civilians packed behind bars—a prison or cage. The caption reads: "No meat today, but read the communiqué, it is excellent." This is a wood engraving in the tradition of political satire descending from Daumier and Gillray: using visual contrast and bitter irony to expose the gap between official propaganda and civilian suffering. Faivre targets German claims of victory while depicting the deprivation of the home front. The image reflects French wartime caricature culture, where the German enemy was depicted as both militaristic aggressor and deluded propagandist.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/