Hande Weg [Hands off]

Post First World War German political poster featuring a French soldier holding a bloodied rifle. He stands astride German soil with one foot in the town of Bochum and the other in Essen. The poster provides a context for the social, cultural, emotional and political situations in Germany during and after the First World War and immediately after. It also provides an insight into the way war was viewed and experienced by the German nation, and of German war propaganda and the chaotic period immediately following the First World War when a struggle for the rights of the German people began between the radical Communists on the left and the strident anti-Bolsheviks on the right. Hermann Karl Frenzel (1882- 1937) trained as a scientific draughtsman and, later, as a painter and graphic artist at the Leipzig Akademie der bildenden Künste. In 1910 he settled in Berlin, first working for a newspaper publisher, then as an independent artist. His career was interrupted by the war of 1914-18. Upon his return from military service, during which he was a pilot and twice wounded, he began to design posters and organise activities in the field of commercial art. In 1920 he was one of the founders of the BDG (Bund Deutscher Gebrauchsgraphiker: Association of German Graphic Designers) and its editor until his death in October 1937, age 55.

Presesnted through the Australian governments Cultural Gifts Program 2006