CRAACE research fellow Julia Secklehner has been interviewed about interwar Austrian and Czech caricature by the cultural and political internet daily Britské listy, one of several Knowledge Exchange projects operated by Glasgow University.
Tag: popular press
‘Weak’ Antisemitism in Interwar Vienna: New essay by Julia Secklehner
CRAACE researcher Julia Secklehner has published a new essay in the volume Visual Antisemitism in Central Europe edited by Jakub Hauser and Eva Janáčová.
Her book chapter ‘Simple Entertainment? Die Muskete and “Weak” Antisemitism in Interwar Vienna’ considers the impact of ‘weak’ antisemitism in the Viennese popular press between 1918 and 1938. It argues that, in addition to the aggressive rhetoric of right-wing forces, visual antisemitism in interwar Viennese satirical magazines was also permeated by softer undercurrents of Jewish stereotyping. Masked as light entertainment, these were perhaps less obvious than their aggressive counterparts, but nonetheless represented a dangerous aspect of popular campaigns to ostracise the Jewish population. Juxtaposing aggressive forms of antisemitism from the satirical magazine Der Kikeriki with ‘weak’ antisemitism in the humorous magazine Die Muskete, the article shows that the ‘othering’ of the Jewish population was widely asserted as a cultural fact in the popular entertainment press, and, particularly in its weaker forms, spanned all political and social lines.
Artwork of the Month, September 2020: This Is What It Looks Like, My Child, This World by Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (c. 1933)
This is what it looks like, my child, this world, that is what you have been born into, there are those born to shear and those born to be shorn. That, my child, is what it looks like in this world of ours and that of other countries, and if you, my child, do not like it, then you will just have to change it.
Set above a busy photo-collage of a newborn baby surrounded by newspaper cut-outs, these words call out for action in a world of political tension. Together with the images below it, they show a violent and turbulent world in which the baby seems already lost in its first moments of life. Forming part of a series of six photo collages created in Vienna in the early 1930s, This Is What It Looks Like gives a glimpse into anti-fascist photographic work in interwar Austria.