The ‘Kaiser Cartoon’, 1914–1918

It would not be controversial to claim that the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II (r.1888–1918) was the most visible and well-known public figure in the world between 1914 and 1918. ¹ Already by the outbreak of war, the Kaiser had established an unparalleled public role as speech-maker, publicist for Germany’s national destiny and representative figurehead of the German Empire. ² Paradoxically – both at home and abroad – this role was frustrated, as well as enhanced, by the negative publicity he attracted, and particularly via the satirical version of the Kaiser promulgated by cartoonists. ³ To friend and foe alike, Wilhelm II seemed ‘the very incarnation of the “waxing vigour” of his nation’. ⁴ His upturned moustache and enthusiasm for ‘stormy declarations, spectacular voyages and military display’ ensured that he was a gift to cartoonists of all kinds. ⁵ With several significant modifications – and based very much on a new, far more critical appreciation of his pre-war image – this was a comic role that continued into wartime caricature. ⁶ Imagined as a mad dog, the Beast of the Apocalypse or simply the owner and originator of ‘the Kaiser’s War’, ‘no personality drew more abuse’ from the Entente side than did Wilhelm II between 1914 and 1918 (and beyond). ⁷ After all, as Barbara Tuchman noted in 1962, who better to represent all that Germany stood for than ‘the Supreme War Lord, whose name was signed to every order of OHL (Oberste Heersleitung – the High Command), so that he seemed the author of all German acts’. ⁸ Despite the real Wilhelm swiftly becoming a Schattenkaiser (‘shadow-emperor’) after 1914, and even shunning the public gaze that had sustained him for so long, the cartoon Kaiser became even more prominent, and those chronicling his misadventures saw no indignity in descending to ‘the basest and blood-thirstiest character assassination’. ⁹