---
title: Schonen Sie Ihren Organismus (Spare Your Organism)
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/schonen-sie-ihren-organismus-1940/
description: A man in profile smokes a cigarette; a red arrow labelled with mucous membranes, throat and nose runs down his neck to bronchi, two lungs, a heart and a…
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Schonen Sie Ihren Organismus (Spare Your Organism)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/schonen-sie-ihren-organismus-1940.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/schonen-sie-ihren-organismus-1940.jpg)

# Schonen Sie Ihren Organismus (Spare Your Organism)

A man in profile smokes a cigarette; a red arrow labelled with mucous membranes, throat and nose runs down his neck to bronchi, two lungs, a heart and a stomach, and the slogan says 'Spare your organism'. Fear-appeal tell: an anatomical diagram stages harm to each organ, with no figures, source or named issuer.

- **Date:** 1940
- **Period:** [Second World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwii)
- **Made by:** German anti-tobacco campaign poster (issuer not named on the poster; concept of Fritz Lickint)
- **Region:** [Western and Central Europe](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=western-central-europe)
- **Country:** [Nazi Germany](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=nazi-germany)
- **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster)
- **Issuer type:** [Mixed](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=mixed)
- **Regime:** [Nazi Germany](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=nazi-germany)
- **Leader:** [Adolf Hitler](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=adolf-hitler)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Warn or inform](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=warn-inform)
- **Theme:** [Health](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=health)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)
- **Regime:** [Nazi Germany](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/nazi-germany/)
- **Leader:** [Adolf Hitler](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/nazi-germany/#adolf-hitler)
- **Source:** Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- **Source:** [Wellcome Collection (London), work b16425273, reference 642527i](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cpypdmek), retrieved September 29, 2026
- **Rights:** CC BY 4.0 as stated by Wellcome Collection (c. 1940 work; publisher unnamed) Wellcome Collection

## Text on the object

Original (German) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
Schonen Sie
Ihren
Organismus

SCHLEIMHÄUTE
RACHEN-NASE
BRONCHIEN
LUNGE
HERZ
LUNGE
MAGEN
```

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

```
Spare your organism. Mucous membranes. Throat and nose. Bronchi. Lung. Heart. Lung. Stomach.
```

Labels are printed along the red smoke-path arrow and on the organs; read from the committed image.

[← 秘密戰ヲ防ゲ (Guard Against Secret Warfare), Japanese home-front counterintelligence poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/japan-counterintelligence-poster-1940/) [วัฒนธรรมของไทย (Thai Culture), dress-code poster of the Phibunsongkhram government →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/thai-culture-dress-poster-1940/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)