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II. The scope of Germany's difficulties and the dramatic pace of events tax our abilities to understand the Weimar Republic and the experiences of its citizens. To obtain a better grasp, we have often turned to period images. For the Weimar period, Grosz's dissenting, modernist graphics have been the touchstone. Indeed, Günther Anders (1961) has claimed that "Grosz was not a child of the times, but that the period was Grosz's child" (in Lewis, 1971, p.9). In his perspective, the lines are so firmly drawn between the haves and have nots. The Stolzenauers' attention, however, turned to the rhymed couplets and satirical cartoons of Wlihelm Busch who in his works from the era preceding WWI had portrayed "the profound inner conflict, still unresolved today, between safe but repressive authority and the half-stifled yearning for self-assertion [. . . ]" (Arndt, 1982, p. 3). These Notgeld images convey the sense of deprivation which the German people had endured since the late years of the Great War, but in the countryside it seems still possible to lament over a glass of wine. The artist/intellectual George Grosz has become ideological; the Everyperson of Wilhelm Busch has become philosophical.

Notgeld from Stolzenau, 1921.
Printed in Berlin by August Scherl, Ltd.

(translation) "Abstinence is the only pleasure,
We can derive from these austere measures."
-- W. Busch