Political Art and the Weimar Republic

FAIN: FB-12380-75

Joseph B. Neville, Jr
University of Wisconsin, Parkside (Kenosha, WI 53144-1133)

A study of political art and the Weimar Republic. The project will focus on the political cartoon as a popular cultural tool which both reflected the political, economic and social difficulties of the German Republic in the 20' s and was intended to influence solutions to these difficulties. Cartoonists will be accepted as artists and their political and social attitudes, as well as their cartooning techniques will be studied. The project will examine the ties between this popular cultural device (the cartoon) and that art which was acceptable to the connoisseurs of the age. The project will offer a humanistic perspective to a fragile mass democratic society, and link the culture of the masses of that society to the culture of the elite of that society.