Description
Designer Unknown: Remember the Lusitania 1915. The incomparable Dr. John Johnson describes this historically important poster as follows:
Remember the Lusitania! replaces the coroner’s report with an emotionally effective contrast between the personal tragedy suffered by an innocent victim and the triumphant manner in which Germans celebrated the event… Its sheer size, however, would impress and catch the eye. On its left half, the poster presents a pathetic vignette of a heroic mother who survived the disaster but lost her three children, “one six years, one aged four, and the third a babe in arms, six months old.” The story is heart wrenching. Any right-thinking person who read or heard it would have been sympathetic. One might even weep, as, we are told, did the people who shared her lifeboat. Deeply moved by the left side of the poster, the viewer is then enraged by the right side. There he reads how the Germans celebrated the day (“Der Tag”) of the sinking—with congratulatory telegrams, “unanimous satisfaction,” “joyful pride,” “riotous scenes of jubilation” and drunken toasts to “Der Tag.” Compare “Germany over All” “The Day.”
The large poster is extremely rare and rarer still in excellent condition. Conservation backing this fragile image is a major financial commitment. 50×40 near mint, conservation backed.
