Hassmann, Carl, 1869-1933

A large group of representatives from several nations, many carrying weapons and making threatening gestures to others, arrive outside the “Palace of Peace” for the peace conference to end the Russo-Japanese War. Andrew Carnegie is posting a notice on the side of the building offering “Best Armor Plate for sale by Andy U.S.A.”

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Carl Hassmann’s cartoon cleverly depicts the actual situation behind the surface rhetoric and posturing between world powers. A second World Peace Congress was organized and funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1905, and held in 1907; and the nations of the world flocked to attend at the Hague. But few of them were committed to disarmament or peace, and the Great War (to commence in 1914) was a universal assumption.

A tattered, but happy, Russian army returns home after the end of the war with Japan. In the background, the rising sun of Japan is visible on the horizon.

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Carl Hassmann’s double-page cartoon in Puck at the end of hostilities in the Far East — where the bold symbol of Japan, the sun, clearly rises; it is not setting, as history learned — is a very sardonic portrayal of the international situation. If anything, his depiction of the defeated Russian army as happy, though sotted, as retaining riches and even singing and occasionally smiling, was scarcely true, even in a cartoonist’s metaphor.

William II, Emperor of Germany, stands in the middle of a narrow cobblestone street, possibly in Italy (the pope, wearing the papal crown, is walking down the street into the background). He is taking a visiting card labeled “Wilhelm” from a small pouch in his left hand. The French flag is hanging above a door labeled “RF,” on the left, where a man is leaning out a window. Austria appears to be the next door on the left, and other rulers lean out windows on both sides of the street. At William’s feet is a suitcase with labels “William Berlin, Hotel Britain, Polar Star, [and] Morocco.” Caption: “Let me see! Whom shall I call on next?”

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German Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow, the former foreign minister who retained much of the diplomatic portfolio under Kaiser Wilhelm II, at this time arranged for the Emperor to undertake overseas trips to enhance the nation’s prestige and international presence. Not all visits were welcome by fellow royals; and some trips were counter-productive, as a leisurely visit to England a few months after this cartoon would prove. (Wilhelm granted a very indiscreet interview to a London newspaper).

Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, sits on his throne. At his feet are an orb, a broken scepter, and a cleft shield showing St. George and the dragon. He is recoiling in horror at being mocked by a gathering of ghosts of the oppressed from ages past, while behind him anarchists with weapons, one about to throw a bomb, are preparing to strike.

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Czar Nicholas II, on his throne in late 1905 was more than a decade from being forced to assuage his restive peoples with meaningless reforms, to abdicate, and to have himself and his family lived as peasants before being brutally murdered. This was in the future, as history knows, yet Carl Hassmann’s chilling portrayal of the Czar’s real position was true and prescient.

Field Marshal Oyama Iwao, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese forces, stands at the top of a hill, holding binoculars, while troops move artillery up the hill behind him. A battle rages in the background.

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Field Marshal Oyama Iwao was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War. His troops’ overrunning of cities (like Port Arthur) and lands were viewed as massacres, but he swept vast lands and rapidly routed Russian and native forces. Puck characterized the decisive warmaking gifts of General Oyama Iwao as providing the most decisive form of peacemaking.

An old and haggard “Justice” sits in a chair on a rock in the East River. Cobwebs have grown over her sword, scales, and an “Indictment.” In the background, the steamship General Slocum is engulfed in flames. (It burned on June 15, 1904, with a loss of over 1,000 lives.) Caption: “Slocum? Slocum? Where have I heard that name?”

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This front-page cartoon is a brutal and stark presentation of the fact that the East River fire and sinking of the excursion boat the General Slocum — a maritime accident still recorded as one of worst disasters in New York City and United States history — had gone relatively neglected by investigators and responsible agencies. The public was properly outraged at the time of the sinking, but many properly thought that justice lagged.

In a battle, at a breach in the “Tariff Wall,” “Trusts, Monopoly, [and] Stand Pat” forces are being led by a king labeled “American Protective Tariff League.” They are repelling invaders fighting for “Fair Trade” and “Honest Revision.” Caption: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more / Or close the wall up with our Standpat dead!”

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Carl Hassmann, Puck‘s imported cartoonist not yet returned to Vienna, had drawn a similar cartoon a couple years previously. His earlier center-spread cartoon showed similar knights of the Middle Ages marching forth to do battle with opponents representing corruption and privilege. Unlike that cartoon, which enumerated honorable combatants by caricatures and the journals they wrote and drew for, this cartoon depicts an actual battle royal, battlements breached, and virtually no recognizable faces, or any faces.

A mermaid dives into the water at a beach and several men swim after her.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1910-08-24

The American Ambassador stands at the head of a dinner table around which are seated the heads of state of several European countries and China, offering them baked beans and “Ice Water” for dinner. Also cooling in a bucket of ice are bottles of “Root Beer” and “Ginge[r] Ale.” On a tight budget, beans are all he can afford. Caption: American Ambassador (who has to live on his salary) — Let me help you to some more baked beans, Princess. My wife cooked them herself.

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Carl Hassmann’s drawing, at first glance, is of a formal diplomatic dinner, proper and with superficial pleasantries. A closer look reveals that the tablecloth of the American ambassador is patched, the food and drink is lower than common fare, and several people in the dinner party are laughing to themselves or disdaining the social situation.

Several artists identified as “Lawrence, Gainsborough, D. Teniers, Rubens, Raphael, Da Vinci, Titian, Duerer, Velasquez, Van Dyke, Reni”, and the friar Girolamo Savonarola as “S,” are being held in a holding pen labeled “Prohibitive Tariff on Art” at Ellis Island Immigration Station.

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The year 1908 was a watershed year in American fine art. It was little recognized at the time — as cultural paradigm shifts seldom are — nor today, but the perceptual revolution attributed to 1913 and the landmark Armory Show in New York City sprouted from seeds planted in 1908. The Post-Impressionist and Expressionists known as “The Eight” and “The Ashcan School” collectively mounted an exhibition at New York’s Macbeth Gallery. Their work was in rebellion against academic painting, and in their ranks were several cartoonists, including William J. Glackens, whose brother Louis was on the staff of Puck.

Representatives from many foreign nations converge on the figure of Peace, who is returning weapons to each ruler. Edward VII, King of Great Britain; Emile Loubet; and William II, Emperor of Germany are walking away with their arms full. Andrew Carnegie stands off to the left handing out sheets of paper labeled “Words & Music of the Conference.”

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Puck magazine’s reliably cynical cartoonist Carl Hassmann addressed the Second International Peace Conference at The Hague, Netherlands, as he had when it was first called, idealistically, by United States Secretary of State John Hay shortly before his death; and as the mutually suspicious latent antagonists convened; and during the posturing of poseurs — monarchs who had no intention to limit arms or agree to land-war treaties they had no intentions of obeying.

In one scene, political prisoners or activists are sentenced to hard labor and sent to Siberia. In another, they are sent to serve on legislative assemblies. Caption: Formerly, patriots were sent to Siberia. Now they are sent to the Duma.

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After decades of unrest in Imperial Russia — assassinations, palace revolts, restive movements in subjugated satellite nations and provinces, the rise socialism, anarchy, and Communism, financial crises, and a disastrous war with Japan — things under Czar Nicholas II spun out of control in 1903-1905. Regional protests, and revolts in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, bloody pogroms against Jews, all further weakened the control Nicholas had over his own people and his own Imperial court.

In the interior of a cathedral filled to capacity, an enormous “$” is illuminated in the place of a rose window.

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Anticipating Art Young’s famous center-spread cartoon in Puck a few years later (“Holy Trinity,” scoring New York’s Episcopal Church for its opulence even as it was a slumlord of tenements), this Carl Hassmann cartoon aims its scatter-shot at American culture and organized religion in general.

A visitors’ gallery at the 2nd Peace Conference at the Hague shows tyrants, invaders, and conquerors seated, including: Frederik II, Oliver Cromwell, Ramses, William I, Hannibal, Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, Richard the Lion Hearted, Caesar, Saladin, Napoleon I, Charlemagne, and Theodorick. They are all laughing.

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The Second International Peace Congress at the Hague — considered the last and most idealistic act of United States Secretary of State John Hay before he died in 1905 —  might have died stillborn because most nations of the civilized world were arming and re-arming at alarming rates at the time. Even the world’s most prominent peace advocate, Andrew Carnegie, who financed many of the conference’s expenses, had sold massive quantities of armor-plate and steel that was clearly to be used for battleships and weapons.

A man labeled “Land Grafter” chops down a tree in a forest where other trees have been cut down. Scattered on the ground are doll-like figures labeled “Dummy Homesteader.”

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One of the side-effects of the Roosevelt Administration’s reforms and the package of progressive legislation passed in 1906 was a rapid, and rapacious, interest in Western lands by railroads and “associated” industries and powers.

A bull labeled “France” is being attacked by insects shaped like clerical figures, which cause it to kick with its hind legs, knocking Pope Pius X off a stool and overturning a bucket and spilling “Papal Revenues.”

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There is a French saying that France will never be anything if not Catholic; however of all the Roman Catholic countries through the centuries, and despite magnificent French cathedrals and associations, France probably has been the most aggressively anti-clerical of all countries. High (or low) moments in actions taken against the Church and papal authority have included the excesses of the French Revolution, and measures to restrict proselytizing, lessen government subsidies, and conform to various secular regulations.

Theodore Roosevelt, wearing his Rough Rider uniform, and with a “Nobel Prize” extending from one pocket and “The Big Stick” leaning against the wall, changes the title of a large painting of George Washington standing next to his horse so that it reads: “First [crossed out and replaced with] Second in War, First [crossed out and replaced with] Second in Peace, First [crossed out] in the hearts of his countrymen.” A book “Alone in Cuba” lies on the floor next to his feet.

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At the dawn of President Roosevelt’s final months of the presidency — that is, after the midterm elections in his second term — Puck inexplicably felt its oats and started attacking the president, its erstwhile friend and ally in reform battles since 1901.