Description
Object description
whole: the main image occupies the majority, with two smaller images positioned in the lower left and lower right. The
title is separate and positioned along the top edge, in black. The text is partially integrated and positioned in the centre, upper right
and along the bottom edge, in black. All held within a narrow black border and set against a white background.
image: a German soldier wearing the black, red and gold colours of the German Weimar Republic and brandishing a whip and pistol, forces a
man, representative of wider Germany, to push a large boulder uphill. The boulder represents war reparations. Behind them a French soldier
sits on top of a large bag of money, also war reparations. Below the main image are two German flags in black, white and red, representing
conservative nationlist Germany.
text: FRANKREICHS WACHT am RHEIN!
9000000 Franc MILLIA [partially obscured]
Reparationen.
Reent Looschen
WÄHLT DESHALB
VATERLÄNDISCHER WAHLDIENST
VEREINIGTE VATERLÄNDISCHE VERBÄNDE
[France's watch on the Rhine! 9,000,000 Francs. Billions. Reparations. So vote. Patriotic voting service. United Patriotic
Associations.]
Label
At the conclusion of the First World War, a defeated Germany was forced to pay considerable reparations to France and
her allies, as part of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. This German nationalist poster displays strong anti-French and anti-Republican
sentiments in lambasting the fledgling government of the German Weimar Republic for so readily handing over large reparations to the French.
After the German revolution at the end of the war a national assembly convened in the city of Weimar, where a new constitution was written
and adopted in August 1919. However, this first attempt to establish liberal democracy in Germany lasted less than fourteen years, ended by
the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933. Hitler's rise was undoubtedly aided by the difficult economic conditions created by
the harsh reparations imposed on Germany and the subsequent Great Depression, as well as by nationalist sentiment, themes that are evident
in this poster.
Inscription
35923