Louis
Raemaekers,
the son of a newspaper editor, was
born in Roermond, Holland on 6th April,
1869. He became a cartoonist and his work appeared weekly in the newspaper
Algemeen Handelsblad between
1906 and 1909.
Although
from a German family, Raemaekers was appalled by the behaviour of
the German
Army in Belgium
in 1914. In the First World War he achieved
fame for his cartoons of Kaiser Wilhelm
and other German politicians that were published in the newspaper
Amsterdam Telegraaf. In his work
Raemaekers "depicted the Germans as godless and the Kaiser as
the ally of the Devil."
The
Dutch government decided to prosecute Raemaekers for "endangering
Holland's neutrality" but he was acquitted by a jury. The German
government now offered a reward of 12,000 Dutch guilders for Raemaekers'
body, dead or alive. Afraid of being murdered by German agents Raemaekers
decided to move to England and his work was published in The
Times.
An
exhibition of 150 of Raemaekers' drawings toured England,
Scotland and France.
His book, Raemaekers Cartoon History of the
War, appeared in 1919.
Louis
Raemaekers died in 1956.
Louis Raemaekers, Thrown to the
Swine: The Martyred Nurse (1915)
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
