1917 – M. Neumont – La Guerre est l’industrie nationale de la Prusse

Title:                     “En 1788 Mirabeau disait déjà: La Guerre est l’industrie nationale de la Prusse”
                                    (As early as 1788 Mirabeau said: War is the national industry of Prussia)

Description:

A striking French propaganda map from the First World War, issued in late 1917 by “La Conférence au Village contre la propagande ennemie en France”. This organisation was founded that year to strengthen morale in the French countryside and counter German propaganda. The map was drawn after a design by the poster artist Maurice Neumont and printed in Paris by P. J. Gallais et Cie. This is the smaller leaflet version of Neumont’s large wall poster.

Prussia is shown as a monstrous octopus wearing a spiked Pickelhaube helmet. Its green tentacles coil around England, France, Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Romania and Russia. Germany is coloured to show how Prussia grew by conquest, with each territory labelled with its date of annexation:

• Silesia, 1740–1765
• The Polish territories, taken in the Partitions of 1772–1795
• Saxony “dismembered” and the Rhine provinces, 1815
• Schleswig-Holstein, 1864
• Hanover and Hesse-Nassau, 1866
• Alsace-Lorraine, “torn from France”, 1871

Red dots mark the “Pays occupés”, the lands occupied by Germany in 1917. They include Belgium, northern France, Serbia, Romania and, in the east, Poland, Lithuania, Volhynia and Ukraine. This is a vivid record of the moment when Lithuania was under German occupation, a year before its independence.

The texts around the map make the argument:

• Alsace-Lorraine: the French government’s declaration of 25 October 1917 that “Alsace-Lorraine, invaded forty-seven years ago, is no different from the French departments invaded three years ago”.
• The Pan-Germans: in red, a quotation from the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband) that the German people must rise as “a people of masters above the inferior peoples of Europe”.
• Pétain: at the foot, General Pétain’s words of June 1917: “Attacked, we are only defending ourselves in the name of Liberty and to save our existence.”
• The slogan: in the upper right, “Toute la France debout pour la victoire du droit” (All of France standing for the victory of right).

On the back is the text “Le Rêve Allemand” (The German Dream):

• Guesde: it opens with a quotation from the socialist leader Jules Guesde (1906), clearly aimed at working-class readers.
• The argument: Germany, an industrial power that produces more than it consumes, has been driven by “Deutschland über alles” to covet world domination.
• The German book: it quotes a German book published in Berlin in 1893, Gross-Deutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950. The book predicts that 86 million Germans will rule 130 million Europeans, and that only Germans will have political rights, serve in the army and navy, or own land.

Artist:                   Maurice Louis Henri Neumont  (1868 – 1930)

Publisher:         La Conférence au Village, 11 avenue de l’Opéra, Paris; printed by P. J. Gallais et Cie, 38 rue Vignon, Paris
Sheet size:          35,0 x 24,3 cm
Year:                     1917
Technique:        colour lithograph
​
Condition:
Good. Bright colours. Some light staining on the verso.

​This is an original antique map published in 1917 and NOT a modern copy or reprint

On your request I will provide a Certificate of Authenticity