An exhibition of the German Newspaper Museum

Media vita in morte sumus. On a daily basis, newspaper show us that in midst of life we are surrounded by death: Bold headlines in large formats, shocking photos on the front page and obituaries in the back of the newspaper. It is natural, that illustrators frequently deal with this topic, as well.

The German Newspaper Museum presents around 120 caricatures on the subject of death from the Koos van Weringh Collection. The drawings stem from international newspapers and magazines that cover periods from 1900 to the present day. These are by no means caricatures of the two World Wars and the many other wars of the century alone. The selection of images documents references a variety of subjects – including soccer, AIDS and mad cow disease – and illustrates the omnipresence of the subject. While death is continuously depicted as a grim reaper or skeleton, the themes of the individual cartoons always reflect the awareness of the respective time.

Visitors are taken on a journey through more than a hundred years of conflict-laden history, which can be retraced in the selected caricatures. True to the motto: A picture says more than a thousand words, the drawings provide many revealing insights – sometimes only at second glance.

The collector Koos van Weringh, born 1934, has been collecting caricatures for over 50 years. He has published a number of books and articles about German and Dutch cartoonists and has curated numerous exhibitions.