Tag: Czech

Kramář’s resolution

Karl Kramář was the leader of the Young Czech Party in Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian Minister of the Interior was Guido von Haerdtl, a German nationalist known for his hostility to Czech interests, especially regarding the use of anything but German as the official language in bureaucratic matters. (Kopřivy, Prague, 1910)

On June 5, 1910, the Chamber of Deputies adopted Kramář’s parliamentary resolution, which called on the government to ascertain nationality during the census.

Czech cholera cartoon

On 6 June, the President forwarded this memorable resolution to the Minister of the Interior.

On June 7, the Minister of the Interior felt that he was experiencing symptoms of cholera.

At that time, the Minister of the Interior brought the memorable Kramář resolution and took the decree of the Chamber of Deputies away to a certain locale.

On June 8, he sent out an order to add it again only according to conversational language, because nationality is something that cannot be ascertained.

Epochal invention

A multi-panel cartoon by Karel Stroff from Humoristické listy (Prague, 1915), drawn at a time during World War I when cities were beginning to experience food shortages, and producers were frequently suspected of overcharging for ersatz materials unsuited for human consumption.

  1. The famous Professor Mikrobec pondered: So many diseases can be averted by vaccination, and one of the most terrible is raging in today’s war. I have to find a serum against it.

2. At the “qualified authorities”: Rest assured, gentlemen, that my invention will not disappoint. We can start tomorrow.

3. It’s nothing, sir, vaccination is healthy. There are so many diseases today…

4. For Christ’s sake, old man, what are you doing? Throw away all the crumbs in the morning, and now make buns like there’s no tomorrow… Are you crazy?
I’m not crazy, but that’s the way it is, that’s the right and honest thing…

5. People cheered on this miracle–

6. (Signs reading “Glory to the most useful scientist!!” and “Long live the inventor of the serum against extortion!!”)
and the grateful nation demanded enthusiastic applause for the professor.

Mr. Beetle’s family

The nature and mishaps of a small family – The Beetles are ill.
Mrs. Beetle: “Hubby, I have a terrible headache… Go get the doctor!”
Mr. Beetle: “Hope it’s not the flu!”
“Honey, I brought you this lady, Dr. Mazlová!”
Mrs. Beetle: “Hm.”
Dr. Mazlová: “You need rest!”
Mrs. Beetle: “Dear, I’ll get up! I’m fine now!”
Dr. Mazlová: “I’m a cardiac specialist.”
Mr. Beetle: “Could you cure my heart?”
(later)
Mr. Beetle: “Dear! I’m so sick, summon Dr. Mazlová!”
Mrs. Beetle: “What’s going on? I’ll call!”
Mr. Beetle: “The pounding. The pounding … My head is killing me!”
Mrs. Beetle: “Here’s Doctor Krása!”
Doctor Krása: “You need rest!”
Mr. Beetle: “Get out! I’m already feeling better!”
Doctor Krása (to Mrs. Beetle): “Always seek my assistance!”
(Komár, Brno, 1927)

Czech flu cartoon

Messrs. Beust and Gramont are cooling off their heartburn

The former Austrian foreign minister, Count Beust, had clashed with the French foreign minister, the Duc de Gramont, in the lead-up to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. This cartoon from early 1873 followed upon Beust’s attempt to settle accounts by publishing letters from that period. Though this is straight politics, I include it because of the clystères, an ongoing theme. (See also this Mexican example from 1886, also a cholera year.)
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1873)

In a time of influenza

From Humoristické listy, Prague, 1890.

“Hey you, ‘borrow’ a magazine somewhere.”
“You wanna entertain yourself with politics?”
“Hah! I would just like to know if they also shut down criminals now like they do schools. Then there would be something more to do.”

Czech flu cartoon

“You’ve got the flu, Tony! Where are you going?”
“To the pharmacy; the master has it, too.”
“Is that so great?”
“No! He’s so weak that I can’t even feel him slapping me.”

(Child writing on school desktop: “During the flu mouths must not be opened”)
The young man’s reason for not giving the teacher any answers to all his questions.

Oh Excellency! Oh Influenza!

“He probably caught cold from his own response!”

The visual joke here is quite simple, with the title punning on the original Italian sense of influenza as influence. Yet the underlying source of its amusement to contemporaries is not readily apparent to us today. The bedridden figure depicted is Austrian Minister-President Count Taaffe, who came down with a mild case of influenza late in December 1889, at the height of the European epidemic that winter. A masterful coalition-building aristocrat who had balanced Austro-German nationalism against Bohemian-Czech nationalism for much of the 1880s, mostly in service to conservative Liberal and noble landowning interests, Taaffe had finally been stymied by the Bohemian diet elections a few months earlier, when the Young Czech nationalists gained the upper hand. Taaffe’s failing confidence in his own rhetorical ability to sustain coalition politics seems to be the central object of the satire here. At his bedside is a bottle of János Hunyadi Bitters, a real product borrowing on the fame of a fifteenth-century Hungarian military hero–a marvelous touch.
(Šípy, Prague, 1889)

Czech flu cartoon

Taaffe’s declining fortunes are satirized in the Polish magazine Szczutek (Lwów, 1892):