Lot 2095

Description

Brilliantly painted in ink and watercolours with white heightening on brown paper, the paper glued together over a total length of approx. 9.40 metres and folded into individual pictures. Presented in the form of a carnival parade with the divisions (tr.): "1. The political leaders' group" with the Pope, Kurt Schuschnigg as "executioner (of Red Vienna)" (the February Uprising 1934), Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg and a court jester with a portrait of "St. Dollfuss". "2. The Fatherland's Front group" with a group of praying, older men, identified as "The sycophants", following a shrine with a "phalanx of St. Engelbertus". "3. The Winterhilfe group" with naked, destitute Austrians. "The group of the 'executive powers' - Heimatwehr - Gendarmerie" with weapons, truncheons, castor oil and dogs, plus National Socialists as victims of the executive powers. "4. The 'Catholic Action' group" with clergyman chopping at an opponent of the church. "Critic is hacked to pieces (they used to be burned)". "5. The tourism advertising group" with restaurateurs and hoteliers on the hunt for foreigners in front of the Deutsches Reich border, sealed with barbed wire and machine guns. "6. The 'legitimists' group" with aged church dignitaries and former royal-imperial officers pulling the pram in which Otto von Habsburg sits, followed by Zita, Empress of Austria. "7. The 'new constitution group" with the "Swiss French cultural bodies", followed by clergymen with a "priest's child" ("The freak"), protesting miners and innkeepers, and "Dr. (Richard) Steidle - The overthrown" and "founder of the Heimatwehr". "8. The 'rabble' group" with a dung heap, upon which the Austrian flag, with a pig wallowing in it, followed by a wheelbarrow with a barrel of manure labelled "Hypocrisy - lies - illegality - treason against the people" and the heading "Enough is enough! Dishonour and disgrace stink to high heaven". Finally, a picture of an Austrian surrounded by these same sheets of paper, entitled "10. He who regards these sheets remains silent, hopes and bides his time!", signed at the end "An Austrian".
The red leather binding with gold-embossed, decorative tendrils on the edge and the title "Oesterreichischer Faschingszug 1935" on the front, lined in red, watered silk. Dimensions of the album 29 x 43.5 cm.
An extremely interesting testimony to the political situation in Austria during and immediately after the government of Engelbert Dollfuss, who, rejecting German national socialism, assumed dictatorial powers over the Austrofascist corporate state as chancellor once he had shut down the parliament, establishing strong ties to Italian fascism and granting the Catholic church enormous influence. The scene showing the "executive powers group" makes reference to the persecution of the National Socialists, who had assassinated Dollfuss in the July Putsch while occupying the Chancellery building.

Condition: II + Questions about the lot?