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Definition – Specific AspectsPage 1 of 5
Describe and analyze the specific features of this source, especially as they relate to the historical-educational field. The caricature, which can be summarized as a (slightly) exaggerated drawn statement – shows its value for a problem-centered history lesson. Its perspective challenges pupils to form opinions. For this reason, the medium of caricature has been used for decades in textbooks. This paragraph will explain the different stylistic device that can be used by illustrators. It will also give detailed instructions about how to interpret these kinds of historical sources. Because the recipient needs to be enabled to decode the analogy between the picture and what was intended by the illustrator (the condition required for the recipient to obtain cognition) pupils often express this as a “light bulb moment”. In paragraph one of this article, you read: “A satirical picture composition with critical, often political aims.” The word “critical” is of particular importance, because in many of the writings on caricatures, it can be more or less explicitly seen that they would have the characteristics of “critical” and “incorruptible.” To be sure, the caricature has a positive image, and can basically be boiled down to caricature = enlightenment. This assumption is also seen in writings on citizenship education such as those by Krüger, who investigates the caricature as a medium for citizenship education in the school. He considers the caricature relevant for teaching, because: “The political caricature has to be valid as a specific medium within a topic, which most of all must remain true to rational enlightenment and autonomous thinking. It must therefore prefer a visual medium which, from a critical distance and upon activation of intellectual ability, may be implicitly required as having an impact."1. Rössner2 also believes that caricatures are particularly suited for school lessons. He sees a caricature as serving to prevent blind obedience to authority. The caricature is thus a means towards a free, self-determining development of opinion and judgment capacities. Although other authors see a more reserved role when it comes to the enlightening element of caricatures, they still acknowledge how satirical drawings were exploited by totalitarian states for propaganda or for the massacre of their opponents. “The railroad, the telegraph, paved streets, the bicycle, women’s liberation, the car, etc. [...] And anti-Semitism? It began with medieval sculptures and engravings where Jews, extortionists, and pigs were all embodied into one [...] not only chauvinism, but anti-Semitism as well seem to be characteristic of the ethos of many caricatures.”3. 1 Krüger, Werner (1969): Caricature as a medium of citizenship education. Opladen. p. 25. |
