Drawing for a satirical cartoon entitled Auslandspropaganda der Franzosen am Rhein for the magazine Simplicissimus, by Karl Arnold, 1923.

A group of four drawings in pen and ink on one sheet showing (1) a dandified French officer giving money to children and ordering them to buy flowers (2) The officer speaks to a photographer (3) The officer sees the children returning with flowers (4) The officer poses for his photograph as he receives the flowers from the children. The last panel is toned with ink wash to simulate the photograph.

This cartoon was published in `Simplicissimus' in 1923. It was published with the title Auslandspropaganda der Franzosen am Rhein [French propaganda on the Rhine] and the captions to the individual scenes of the cartoon were (1) Kauft mir mal Blumen [Buy me some flowers] (2) Hier ausstellen [Place yourself here] (3) Obacht, sie kommen [Look out, they're coming] (4) Unsere Aufnahme zeigt die Beliebtheit der französischen Besatzungsarmee [Our picture shows how much liked the French Occupying Forces are]

Simplicissimus was a satirical magazine founded in Munich in 1896. It published cartoons, which satirised, amongst other things, the boorishness of the Prussian Military caste. From the late 1920s until the mid 1930s it attacked the members of the Nazi party, but after that it had to confine itself to less dangerous topics until it ceased publication in 1944. One of the German grievances in the 1920s was the French presence on what was considered to be German soil. After the defeat of the Germans in 1918, the French army occupied the Rhineland until a withdrawal was negotiated in 1930. With Reparations it was the major target of German diplomacy during the Weimar Republic.

E.357-1993