Het Toppunt der Beschaving (The Summit of Civilization), number 5, Louis Raemaekers

Exhibition Label: "Machine in a Void: World War I & the Graphic Arts," Mar-2010, Steve Goddard Louis Raemaekers was one of the most successful propagandists of the First World War. His viciously anti-German cartoons, made in the neutral Netherlands, were fueled by reports of German atrocities during the War. Outraged, Germany attempted to have Raemaekers put on trial for undercutting Dutch neutrality. When this did not produce results, Germany offered a bounty for delivering Raemaekers to them, dead or alive. Under this threat, Raemaekers spent much of the War in England, where he continued to work. Raemaekers’s cartoons appeared in numerous journals and in many formats. Each of the seven numbers of Het Toppunt der Beschaving (The Summit of Civilzation) included 12 full page, black-and-white reproductions of Raemaekers’ cartoons, bound with a color lithographic cover. The texts for each cartoon were given in German, Dutch, French, and English.