Hitleriada Macabra and Hitleradia Furiosa

Bound copy of Hitleriada Macabra and Hitleradia Furiosa cartoons by Stanislaw Toegel published by Antoni Markiewicz, and printed in an edition of 1450 by Emil Falcon for FW Döbereiner, Hamburg in 1946.

In 'Hitler Macabra' the artist depicts Nazi leaders and SS officers as beastly monsters who gained sadistic pleasure from the torture and torment of their victims. They are confronting images depicting Nazi cruelty and violence. The final image in the series shows the theft of art works by Nazi officers following the quashing of the Warsaw Ghetto. The prints in this series are titled: The Butcher; "Preliminary investigations"; Strength through joy; A sharp shooter; What makes them smile; Guard by the walls of the ghetto; "Investigations" on a 16 year old girl; SS Bestia; Hanging by the nose: the 8 day torture of Jan Blazejowski; "Science" gives a hand and The conquerors of Warsaw get their trophies.

Created towards the end of the Second World War 'Hitler Furiosa' is a series of darkly humorous caricatures lampooning the leadership and the fate of the Third Reich as it collapsed (1944-45) under pressure from the Allies. This technique of reducing a feared enemy to ridicule was psychologically a means to gain some power over them and to boost morale. "Among defensive and offensive weapons employed totally in the Second World War political satire took its own place. It had a large significance as a poisonous instrument of diversion. It was an efficient medicine for oppressed people against resignation, against despair, against prostration." [From the preface to the lithographs] The prints in this series are titled: The day of reckoning; The old glory; The little innocent; "Germany, Germany over all"; The three German Gods; Germany will never surrender; The May Day Fool; "My name is Meier of one British bomb falls on Berlin"; The dream of power in 1941; "Germania furiosa"; Today Germany, tomorrow the world; and His master's voice.

The original cartoons were created clandestinely by Stanislaw Toegel, a Polish POW, in German labour camps during the final years of the Second World War. Stanislaw Toegel (1905-1953) was a lawyer and amatuer artist, who served as a reserve officer with the Polish Army and was captured by the Germans after the battle for Poland in 1939. He escaped and spent the German occupation in Warsaw. During this time Toegel actively participated in the Polish underground movement of the AK (Armia Krajowa or Home Army). After the Warsaw uprising was quashed by the Germans in October 1944 Toegel was once again sent to a prison camp at Göttingen, Germany, where he was forced to labour in a paper mill. It was here under difficult conditions that he produced the original satrical drawings in secret. This was despite the certain death sentence that his identification as the artist by the Germans would mean. After the camp was liberated in 1945 Toegel worked in a Displaced Persons or D P camp at Osnabrück, Germany. During his time there he contributed further drawings and articles for a journal circulated amongst the DP camps.