"Propheten einer neuen Welt" (Nebelspalter cartoon, 1918)
Two towering robed figures, one with an ape-like face and one bespectacled, stand before glaring rays holding twin tablets numbered in Roman numerals from I to XIV, above a crowd of anguished faces. The tell is the Moses-and-Aaron staging: the Ten Commandments' prestige is laid over Wilson's Fourteen Points.
- Date
- 1918
- Period
- First World War
- Made by
- Nebelspalter (Zürich satirical weekly)
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- Switzerland
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- Swiss Confederation
- Leader
- Felix Calonder
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- War and the military, Religion
- Event
- World War I
- Techniques
- Transfer
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain in U.S. (published 1918; LOC: no known restrictions in U.S.)
Nebelspalter (Zürich), cartoon clipped from a German newspaper, [1918]. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-23542, LOT 3564.
Text on the object
No printed words on the cartoon itself. The two tablets carry Roman numerals I to VII (left) and VIII to XIV (right), and a monogram with a two-digit year is in the lower right corner.
The title and caption come from the Library of Congress record (title "Propheten einer neuen Welt"; caption note in German about the "Brüder Mose"), not from print on the image. The committed JPEG is a 1280-pixel greyscale conversion of the LOC master TIFF.
