Walter
Trier
was born in
Prague in 1890. He arrived in Munich in 1909 and
soon afterwards his cartoons began appearing in Kladderadatsch
and Simplicissimus.
In
the 1920s Simplicissimus
strongly opposed Adolf Hitler and the
right-wing press accused the journal of being under the control of
the Jews. The Nazis were especially hostile
to the cartoons of Trier and Thomas
Heine. When the Nazis
gained power in 1933 stormtroopers arrived at the offices of Simplicissimus
and warned against the publication of anti-Hitler cartoons.
When left-wing writers artists began to be arrested, Trier and Thomas
Heine left the country. Trier moved to England where
he worked for Lilliput.
He also provided material for other journals including the London
based Die Zeitung
and over 80 covers for the New
Yorker.
During the Second World War Trier helped the
Ministry of Information with anti-Nazi leaflets and political propaganda
drawings. Walter Trier
died in Canada
in 1951.
Walter Trier, Two Weeds: the Creeping
Quisling and the Common Heydrich.
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