Hand inked and painted paper mounted on board. Titled in gothic German "Stehndler Adler", or "Standing Eagle". This truly remarkable piece was used as a carnival game in which the player tries to throw a dart at the target and as close to the center as possible to win a prize. The "target" is in the form of a religious jew, who has enormous, oversized hands resembling the claws of an eagle. A repulsive and frightening foreshadowing of what would happen to the Jews of Europe led by Germany only a few decades after this was created.
Signed and dated by the artist, 1903, from Germany.
Between October 2005 and May 2006, the Jewish Museum of Hohenems, Austria launched an exhibition titled "Anti-Jewish Knick-knacks: Popular Images of the Jews and Contemporary Conspiracy Theories from the Finkelstein Collection". This exhibit featured what a man named Gideon Finkelstein collected; anti-semitic objects and images from many centuries. Knick-knacks and fair ground attractions, beer glasses and walking sticks, ash trays and caricatures, porcelain figures and paintings that “helped” people in Europe to express their fantasies about the Jews. The website of this museum still has a page detailing this exhibit, and they chose two photographs as a sampling of what was displayed. One of the two items pictured is of another similar carnival target.
https://www.jm-hohenems.at/en/exhibitions/past_exhibitions/anti-jewish-knick-knack
19in H., 19in W., 49cm H., 49cm W.,
Share this lot: