National Bolshevik Iconography in the Weimar Republic: Symbols, Colours and Caricatures

This article aims at analysing the iconography of the National Bolshevik movement that gravitated around the magazine « Widerstand » in the last phase of the Weimar Republic. The political message of the review was entrusted to the cooperation between its leader Ernst Niekisch and the artist A. Paul Weber. After tracing the events that led to their encounter, the article sheds light on the symbols of the movement and examines the drawings of A. Paul Weber published in the National Bolshevik press, attempting at tackling its recurrent motives and the artistic models (and highlighting most of all the influence by Wilhem Busch and Alfred Rethel such as of Symbolism and Alfred Kubin). Weber’s talent for linking different references and even aesthetic options emerge. Moreover, his drawings represent a significant case study in the non-linearity of the relationship between text and image. The semantic complexity of Weber’s iconography reveals broader and largely autonomous meanings than the political discourse asserted by Niekisch.