Spartakus bei der Arbeit: Vereinigung zur Bekämpfung des Bolschewismus [Spartacus at Work: Alliance to Combat Bolshevism]

German poster published either nearing the end or soon after the cessation of the First World War. The poster targets the increasing influence of the Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), which was a Marxist revolutionary movement in Germany emerging from the First World War and headed by notable Marxists Karl Liebnecht and Rosa Luxemburg - both of whom were executed by the Rifle Division of the Cavalry Guards of the Freikorps on 15 January 1919. Reflecting on the Revolution in Russia Marxism was regarded as a major threat to German during this period.

This poster depicts the Spartakusbund personified as a murderer, killing a husband while his wife and child lay beneath, murdered and bloody. The mother is depicted topless, perhaps as a reference to traditional iconography of the personification of liberty such as in Eugene Delacroix's 1830 monumental painting 'Liberty Leading the People' that today hangs in the Louvre - hence the metaphor that Bolshevism kills liberty.