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Munich (dpa) - It happened at the time when Munich was shining, according to Thomas Mann.

Art, culture and business flourished around 1900, there was a bohemian trend, and there was the young publisher Albert Langen (1869–1909), who lived in France and got to know the poster art of greats like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

But there was also another world, that of the strict soldier Prussians.

Langen's idea of ​​a satirical magazine grew out of this contrast.

And so on April 4, 1896, the first edition of «Simplicissimus» saw the light of day in Langen's publishing house, which is still in existence today: caricatures with claims, artistically and politically - with oomph.

"That really popped out" at the station kiosk, says Gisela Vetter-Liebenow, director of the German Museum for Caricature and the Art of Drawing Wilhelm Busch in Hanover.

"A large, colored title page - that didn't exist before."

The German caricature thus found international connection - to this day, the "Simplicissimus" is known all the way to the USA.

Writer Tom Wolfe wrote the preface for a US catalog.

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"It was the" house paper of the liberals ""

says Christoph Stölzl, founding director of the German Historical Museum and former director of the Munich City Museum, characterizing the magazine.

“It had a huge impact.

There was something very effective about the drawings and graphics, and he was entertaining, too, and sometimes had harmless, erotic drawings. "

And it was real art, drawn by the greats of the time: Eduard Thöny, Thomas Theodor Heine, Olaf Gulbransson, Heinrich Zille, Bruno Paul and Rudolf Wilke from the magazine “Jugend”, which gave the Art Nouveau its name.

Texts came from Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Kurt Tucholsky, Ludwig Thoma, Guy de Maupassant, for example.

Thematically, the paper with the red bulldog as heraldic animal was against everything that Prussia stood for: The magazine "was strong in the criticism of militarism, in criticism of the imperial armament of the empire, the apostles of morality and the repressive sexual criminal law," says Stölzl.

Well-known, for example, is the caricature in which crusaders like Barbarossa make fun of useless Byzantine journeys - an allusion to a trip by Kaiser Wilhelm II, which brought the draftsmen under fortress imprisonment.

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The drawing with respectable gentlemen in the nightclub and the line “Your productions seem very reprehensible from the point of view of morality are directed against the bigotry of the time.

Please want to repeat the same. "

In another, God has to throw himself into a lieutenant's uniform so that he can still be taken seriously on earth.

And veterans' clubs as well as normal subjects are portrayed as bootlickers who literally worship every shit that the monarchy - or even their horses - donate.

But at the beginning of the First World War, artists and the people fared: the paper joined the patriotic hurray in 1914.

"Since the innocence was gone, actually forever"

,

judges Stölzl.

Inflation, hunger and the French became the enemy in the Weimar Republic.

But the Munich Bierdimpfl, who just wants his peace and quiet and whose eyes are staring at the swastikas, is also portrayed.

Nevertheless, the makers buckled completely before the Nazis, says Stölzl.

«After 1933 came the fall of man: First the SA demolished everything in the editorial office, and shortly afterwards those who remained, who were also owners, took part.

Morally speaking, the "Simplicissimus" vegetated again until 1944. »

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It was revived after the war: from 1954 to 1967 it appeared under its old name.

One of the draftsmen at the time was the very young Horst Haitzinger, then still a student.

From his point of view, “Simplicissimus” had “ten totally outdated draftsmen who were totally apolitical”, says Haitzinger, who ended his career in 2019.

But the former fame of the paper had not faded for him: "I was floating on cloud nine as I published the first drawing in" Simplicissimus "."

There is now nothing comparable in Germany, Vetter-Liebenow regrets.

"Today there is a completely different flood of images, a more complex world, one message chases the other."

The biggest problem, however, is "the political correctness, the much stronger sensitivity".

When asked what satire is allowed to do, one has to realize that many do not even know what satire is.

"It's fast and you immediately trigger a wave of outrage."

An exhibition in her museum planned for autumn will ask the question: "How unfree have we become?"

So were the satirists at the time of Kaiser and "Simplicissimus" even freer than they are today?

No, says Vetter-Liebenow.

“But today we are giving up a lot of the freedom we have achieved voluntarily.

We want to be so good, not to hurt anyone, to keep an eye on every minority and to forbid ourselves from addressing some matters. "

You don't have to share statements from satire.

"But I have to allow them."

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210402-99-64928 / 3

Information on the "Simplicissimus"