Picturing the perils of greed: Kladderadatsch and the 1873 financial crash

This article examines the coverage of the 1873 stock market crash and its aftermath in the Berlin satirical paper Kladderadatsch, whose illustrations were drawn by Wilhelm Scholz. Images and texts together reported on government activities, offered critical commentaries on the state of society, and acted as the voice of the country’s liberal conscience. The illustrations critiqued not only prominent political figures but also the general public who were investors in the stock market and readers of Kladderadatsch. Scholz’s caricatures employed a variety of techniques in which figures were depicted realistically or transformed in different historical, literary or mythological settings. These pictorial strategies allowed him to contextualize the flux of contemporary events and patterns of human behaviour in a historical continuum. At their most successful, the images stimulated discourses on German identity and moral values and visualized the nature of modernity. This material will appeal to readers interested in the history of visual culture, journalism, capitalism and the early Wilhelmine Empire.