JF Ptak Science Books Post 1561
There have been some fits and starts in dedicating an effort to posting some examples of German book illustration from the period between-the-wars. There have been just a few thus far on this blog, though my intention is to place a hundred of the interesting bits in the collection here--most of these are pamphlets, and the vast majority do not make an appearance in the WorldCat database, which means that they are not catalogued/located in any library collection anywhere in the world. Of course some folks say that pamphlets are a somewhat different category from books, and so don't get catalogued as frequently, and therefore may actually exist in some number in these libraries--but if the library doesn't know whether they have a particular title or not basically means that the book or pamphlet just isn't there. In the majority of circumstances, "we don't know if we have it" = "its not here", which pretty much means that for official purposes, the thing doesn't exist.
And so to today's installment: Das Gesicht der Hungersanierung, Agitationsmaterial No.2, which seems to me to be a statistical handbook for a member of Germany's Communist Party (KPD, the Kommunist Partei Deutschland), a very short primer on the status of the general working-poor laborer, inflation and unemployment --and how whoever published this pamphlet could help its redaer.
The pamphlet does have a distinctive Communist Party taste to it, and certainly the title of one of the full-page illustrations seems to identify itself as such: "So Kampft die Rote EInheitsfront!". Given the leaning of the rhetoric, and the assault on the controllers of industry, and its dislike for Fascists, it leads me to believe that this is KPD (though I hasten to add that I am hardly any sort of expert on Germany politics of the early 1930's).
There is some fair amount of the content of this pamphlet that appears on the facade of the KPD headquarters, painted right on the bricks of the Berlin building, as it stood in 1932. THe party would have a very short life after that--Hitler and the Nazis would arrest the leaders of the party right there in that building in January, 1933, once Hitler had consolidated his power. On gaining the Chancellorship, Hitler took care to eliminate the KPD as much
as possible, imprisoning thousands of Party members in concentration camps as early as that same year, 1933.
The Communist Party did after all control some amount of the Parliament, finishing so (see tables below) in the 1932 elections; but the big loser of course was Hindenburg, and the rest of the world.
This short, oversized pamphlet was no doubt constructed hurredly, emphasizing the control of the owners of the means of production over the worker, displayed on the cover by the giant "boss" with one hand around the worker's neck and the other in his pocket, bolstered on the interior few pages with statistics. But there was little, really, to say about the Nazis themselves, which makes me think that this was printed before that final vote in July.
Notes:
The German elections, 1932.
First round
| Candidate | Votes (%) | Party membership |
|---|---|---|
| Paul von Hindenburg | 18,651,497 (49.6) | Incumbent with no party affiliation |
| Adolf Hitler | 11,339,446 (30.2) | National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party (NSDAP) |
| Ernst Thälmann | 4,983,341 (13.2) | Communist Party of Germany (KPD) |
| Theodor Duesterberg | 2,557,729 (6.8) | German National People's Party (DNVP) |
Turnout was 86.2%.
Second round
| Candidate | Votes (%) | Party membership |
|---|---|---|
| Paul von Hindenburg | 19,359,983 (53.1) | Incumbent with no party affiliation |
| Adolf Hitler | 13,418,517 (36.7) | National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party (NSDAP) |
| Ernst Thälmann | 3,706,759 (10.1) | Communist Party (KPD) |
Third Round
| Party | Vote percentage (change) | Seats (change) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) | 37.8% | +19.0% | 230 | +123 |
| Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) | 21.9% | -2.9% | 133 | -10 |
| Communist Party of Germany (KPD) | 14.6% | +1.2% | 89 | +12 |
| Centre Party (Z) | 12.3% | +0.6% | 75 | +7 |
| German National People's Party (DNVP) | 6.1% | -1.1% | 37 | -4 |
| Bavarian People's Party (BVP) | 3.6% | +0.2% | 22 | +3 |
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