Hassmann, Carl, 1869-1933 | - Theodore Roosevelt Center

A Christmas joke with a point to it

In the interior of a frontier cabin, a long table is set for a Christmas turkey dinner. Around the table are seated several people, some of whom are surprised to discover an arrow stuck in the turkey, shot by a Native standing outside the open door of the cabin.

Comments and Context

In Puck Magazine’s holiday issues — Easter, Midsummer, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas — the publishers generally yielded space routinely reserved for political cartoons to thematic, seasonal, or purely humorous subjects.

Down in the world

European leaders from England, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Germany, Austria, and Turkey are among the crowd enjoying the entertainments at the “Casino Del’ Europe.”

Comments and Context

Carl Hassman, Puck Magazine’s Viennese import who specialized in statements more than cartoons, often apocalyptic and frequently in poster styles, combined those attributes in this cartoon featuring the world’s monarchs in a fantasized setting. Royals and nobility sit, primping and resplendent in their medals and finery, at an imaginary casino.

On the rack

An allegorical female figure labeled “San Francisco” is being tortured “on the rack” by a cast of medieval-looking executioners labeled “Cement Dealer, Lumber Dealer, Iron Workers’ Union, Steel Trust, Bricklayers Union, Building Materials, [and the central figure] Greed” in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed much of San Francisco. Caption: “Generosity” is easy when you can get your money back with interest.

Comments and Context

There are many possible subtexts to Carl Hassmann’s brutal and explicit allegory of systemic political corruption in San Francisco. Or it might a “simple” indictment of the current administration’s mismanagement there, spectacular as it was.

Instead of intervening in Cuba and South America, why not ship the revolutions to Coney Island and let us all get some fun out of them? Two performances daily, with the original casts and costumes

A ship lies at a loading dock in Cuba or South America where they are shipping their revolutions, with scenery, military equipment, and personnel, to Coney Island. There is organization and composure in the boarding of the ship as revolutionaries and soldiers await their turns.

Comments and Context

This complicated cartoon by Carl Hassmann, full of private encounters and visual humor amidst the hubbub, asks a question that, in an America now used to theme parks, almost seems logical. The idea to not solve each new territory’s social or economic challenges, but to allow Americans to acquaint themselves with the cultures of the new American possessions — was maybe before its time.

[The meat market]

A butcher labeled “The Beef Trust” stands behind a counter in a butcher shop. Around him are meat products labeled “Potted Poison, Chemical Corn Beef, Bob Veal Chicken, Tuberculosis Lard, Decayed Roast Beef, Deodorized Ham, Embalmed Sausages, [and] Putrefied Pork.” A verse from the Bible appears below the counter: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink.” Matthew VI:25.

Comments and Context

Carl Hassmann’s cover cartoon in Puck is of a recent thematic preoccupation in the weekly — not intending to amuse, and advocating for a cause rather than a party. At the muckraking height of scandals and exposes of the Beef Trust, the meat-packing industry, adulterated foods, and dangerous patent medicines, a stereotypical grimy butcher might have converted readers to vegetarianism, but at least stoked the campaigns for Pure Food and Drug laws.

The socialist tower of babel

A group of young American men argue among themselves at an outdoor cafe overlooking the construction of the Tower of Babel in the background. Caption: Confusion of ideas among the young American builders.

Comments and Context

The year 1906 arguably represents a turning-point in the evolution of socialism in the United States. At the very least it came face-to-face with Marxian ideas as a casual lodestar or as an intellectual imperative. Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?, a now-obscure book written by a German sociologist, Werner Sombart, had a profound effect on groups of radicals previously barely connected except by vague complaints.

Puck Easter

A court jester entertains a young woman wearing a crown on her head, sitting on a large stone bench.

Comments and Context

Carl Hassmann, whose work at Puck virtually consisted of two themes — dark and brooding disasters that threatened domestic or international peace; or poster-like decorative or frivolous designs. Puck‘s 1906 Easter cover was assigned to Hassmann, the Viennese immigrant, and he produced a variant on Puck‘s traditional Lenten themes of suppressed social abandonment, or Easter’s notice that social strictures were loosed (never a religious subtext).

A new and finer crown for California

A female figure holds out a crown labeled “The New Frisco,” fashioned after a city skyline. A bear sits on the ground next to her and, in the background, are 16th or 17th century sailing ships. The context of this cover cartoon is the destruction of San Francisco three weeks previous, and the city’s hopes for renewal.

Comments and Context

This Hassmann cover, an elegant and sunny poster-like statement, was Puck‘s first response to the horrendous San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, approximately three weeks earlier. Exigencies of planning, publishing, and distributing a weekly magazine with a cover date that was usually a week later than the printing sometimes led Puck to miss events related to daily headlines, or address them after the major components of the story.

The rising waters

A man, woman, and infant wearing ragged clothing labeled “The American Middle Class” sit on a rock labeled “Opportunity” above the rising waters of “Centralized Wealth” in which sharks are circling. In the background, only the head and shoulders of the Statue of Liberty are visible above the water.

Comments and Context

“The Rising Waters” by Carl Hassmann is a masterpiece of editorial-cartooning iconography, and a slight example of period hyperbole. It relied on few labels, and the expressions of the couple and the storm clouds easily conveyed the intended flavor. The spirit of the times believed that corporate abuses and an unregulated economy represented a threat to average Americans and liberty itself.

A dream of the fourth

A young boy sits on the ground, leaning against a tree, asleep. Around him are clusters of fireworks waiting to be ignited.

Comments and Context

A boy’s dream (as would have been specified in the Old Days) on the Fourth of July. Napping in a little country spot on the Fourth, as per the magazine’s issue date above his head, flowers have turned to pinwheels, Roman candles, and other fireworks.

His father’s money

A young rake stands beneath a cloud of past exploits, smoking, and spilling a glass of alcohol, in the presence of a young woman fashionably dressed in red. An overturned chair and empty champagne bottle litter the floor in the background, as well as the shade of a child reaching up toward him.

Comments and Context

This large and somewhat shocking cartoon by Carl Hassmann, moralistic in tone, probably was inspired by the disgraced heir to the Equitable Life Assurance Company fortune, James Hazen Hyde. He had been caught in public exposures of the insurance industry in 1904, threw a scandalous costume ball at Sherry’s in New York — regarded by press and public as a near-orgy, and by 1906 had declined his imminent takeover of the powerful insurance company. Although only 29 years old, Hyde was worth almost a half-billion dollars (in twenty-first century money) yet in 1906 he exiled himself to France.

The coming of William Jennings Lohengrin

Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin is being performed. At center, William Jennings Bryan appears in the role of Lohengrin, Knight of the Swan, who has just arrived, to the delight of “Miss Democracy,” standing on the left, in the role of Elsa, and to the chagrin of Perry Belmont and Thomas Fortune Ryan, standing on the right, who are playing the roles of Friedrich of Telramund and his wife Ortrud. James K. Jones plays the role of the King, seated on a throne on the left beneath a shield labeled “Jefferson.” A large supporting cast appears on each side.

Comments and Context

Through its life, and especially in its early years, Puck assumed its readership was familiar with classical references, especially German operas (the magazine originally was a German-language weekly, and published a German edition for many years).

Going to market again

William Jennings Bryan, as a farmer, drives a wagon packed high with farm produce labeled “Popularity” past a signpost labeled “to 1908 Market.” The wagon is drawn by a diminutive donkey struggling to pull the weight. Caption: Can he keep his vegetables fresh till he gets there?

Comments and Context

William Jennings Bryan let the country know he had returned from a world tour in late 1906, just in time to rescue America and run for president again two years hence. The sarcasm redolent in that sentence was prominent in Puck‘s treatment of the Commoner’s broad hints, and it was a skeptical reaction shared by many journals, even supposed Democratic organs like Puck and even many Democrats, but the party had few other potential leaders of national stature.

The Russian deluge

People cling to a large rock in a stormy sea. Some are royalty and some are terrorists. In a flash of lightning in the background appears the word “Revolt.”

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Carl Hassmann’s evident specialty, the depiction of apocalyptic threats and figures in crisis situations, is what he needed to delineated the situation of Imperial Russia at the end of 1905.

The crusaders

A large group of politicians and journalists appear as knights on a crusade against graft and corruption. Many carry large pens like a lance. Periodicals mentioned are “Colliers, Harper’s Weekly, Life, Puck, [and] McClure’s” Magazine. Caption: Marching embattled ‘gainst the Saracens of Graft.

Comments and Context

This cartoon by Carl Hassmann, which resembles a poster, could indeed be a historian’s guide to the leading crusading Muckrakers of the day (circa 1906, the high-water mark of reform before the Progressive Era and certainly in journalism and books). The double-page cartoon is a panegyric to the movement, a paean to the personalities.

Cupid at the White House

Cupid appears on horseback, shooting two handguns into the air outside the North Portico of the White House, on the occasion of the wedding of Alice Lee Roosevelt, President Roosevelt’s daughter, and Nicholas Longworth. Caption: February 17th, 1906.

Comments and Context

Theodore Roosevelt had such personal magnetism that cartoonist Carl Hassmann transformed Cupid himself into a cowboy for a day. That day saw the wedding of “Princess” Alice Lee Roosevelt and a Republican congressman from Ohio, Nicholas Longworth, a future Speaker of the House. The Longworth Office Building on Capitol Hill is named in his honor. The pair had known each other socially for several years, but a romance developed on a diplomatic trip to Japan and the Philippines in 1905 with Secretary of War William Howard Taft.

Conscience hath a thousand tongues

An elderly man, John R. Walsh, is being assailed from all sides by people who have been defrauded by his misappropriation of funds from their savings and investments. Caption: Cursed by those whose savings he has squandered and whose trust he has betrayed.

Comments and Context

John R. Walsh, an Irish immigrant active in Chicago, is at the center of this Carl Hassmann cartoon. Typically dramatic and apocalyptic, his portrayal such that he might be considered one of American history’s notable villains. Yet he is barely remembered, and might be categorized as an entrepreneur who continually struggled and mismanaged his multitude of dreams.

The Russian crown

A crown in the shape of a human skull appears against a background of blood dripping into the title area at the bottom.

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Carl Hassmann, in his apocalyptic mode, again chose the dissolution of the corrupt and doomed Romanov dynasty, as it seemed in 1905. Czar Nicholas was indeed beset by intractable problems — crises inside his family and court, inside and outside his country, his military, his subjects, his economy, his once-servile satellite states, his standing in the world. Yet it would be a dozen years before his reign crashed around him in the 1917 Socialist, then Bolshevik, revolutions. The bloody 1905 revolution was merely a precursor.

Puck Christmas 1905

Santa Claus kisses a young woman on the cheek, framed by a holly wreath.

Comments and Context

The versatile cartoonist Carl Hassmann, resting from his stark depictions of impending doom, reprises his cover-artist role from the recent Thanksgiving holiday: a cheery, poster-like composition. A holly wreath is obligatory, but his Santa Claus waits not for a mistletoe.

Puck Thanksgiving 1905

A domestic servant carries a large platter with a roast turkey raised above her shoulders to keep it away from a dog anxious for a taste.

Comments and Context

The relative newcomer on Puck‘s artistic staff in 1905 was Carl Hassmann, who by this date, Thanksgiving of 1905, had established himself as a cartooning Grim Reaper, usually drawing realistic portrayals of dirty corruption or impending disasters. So this holiday cover — a placement lately reserved for Rose O’Neill, Frank Nankivell, or Louis M. Glackens — proved his versatility. As with many magazines of the day, an Art Nouveau “poster look” addressed readers; a pleasant design (of course non -political at holidays) and featuring the era’s inevitable version of a Gibson Girl.