Laima Laučkaitė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2014.6.5
During the war, images in mass media served as a means of ideology and propaganda, a weapon used to fight for one or another of the involved sides. Hence, the image cannot evade control exercised by censorship and the producers themselves. This article is a case study of a newspaper, Zeitung der 10. Armee, and its illustrated supplement, Scheinwerfer, published by German troops that resided in Vilnius during WWI. The article focuses mainly on the illustrative work of the contributors, including fine artists Fred Hendriok, Andreas Paul Weber, Karl Schmoll von Eisenswerth and Gerd Paul. The aim of the article was to analyse the preferred images and dominant genres under extreme war conditions. Propaganda images circulated in print media during WWI were neither pre-produced nor received from the ‘centre’ but were made ‘on-site’ in Vilnius. Therefore, the producing strategies form the core of the analysis in this article.
Keywords: World War I, Vilnius, German art, mass media, caricature