Evil Empires II: British Images , 48 political drawings, Berlin 1943
The works of Thuringian graphic artist A. Paul Weber were strongly influenced by the visionary imaginations of Alfred Kubin. In his main work, the graphic cycle “British images”, published in 1941, influences from Gustave Doré´s “London Pilgrimage” can be traced, as well as of those of other French illustrators such as Théophile Steinlen, Charles Léandre and Jean Veber, who all drew for the anarchist caricature magazine “Assiette au beurre”. The “British images” were created on the artist’s own initiative, and they reflect the radical anti-capitalist attitude of its author. Weber belonged to an anti-democratic, right-wing Bolshevik resistance circle who accused Hitler’s Nazism of a fatal entanglement with Western financial capitalism. After a one year imprisonment, he arranged himself with the NS regime, which would then publish the “British images” as welcome propaganda material. In the post-war period, Weber worked for the famous German caricature magazine “Simplicissimus,” and became, with his anti-fascist legend, although admittedly enigmatic and gloomy, one of the foremost graphic artists of a West- German financial capitalist reality.
British Images, 48 political drawings
What Athens was in science, Rome in power, / What Tyre appear’d in her meridian hour, / ’tis thine at once, fair Albion! to have been – / … But Rome decay’d, and Athens strew’d the plain .. Like these, thy strength may sink. (Lord Byron 1809 )
The Tower
The Cathedral
The Stock Exchange
Pioneers
Pirates
Slave Traders
Commercial Empire
Ireland
Gibraltar
Copenhagen
India
King Cotton of Manchester
Assets of the Opium Wars
Divide and rule
High School
Boerwar on Gold and Diamonds
On target
Peaceful penetration of Ireland
Arabs
Fair game
Pax Britannica
The white man´s burden
Oh tho be in England again
The plumpudding
Hunger in Ireland
Expulsion of the farmers in Scotland
“A hunting we will go…”
Wales underground
Looms in Lancashire
View towards Windsor
It is a long way to Tipperary
Unemployed
Charity bazaar
Westminster
The golden coach
The empty shell
The lie
Secret service
The malice
Death in Flanders
The gravedigger of the small nations
The broker
The Bank of England
The decline
The flag falls
“Onward Christian soldiers!”
Choir of spirits
The End
…..Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, / But leechlike to their fainting cuntry cling, / Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, – / A people starved, and stabbed in the untilled field,- An army, which leberticide and prey … (Percy By