MOST POPULAR BERLINER

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 83, 2 January 1930, Page 15

MOST POPULAR BERLINER

HEINRICH ZILLE, CARTOONIST

GLIMPSE OF HIS HUMOUR

A funeral procession in honour of Heinrich Zille, the man who captured the spirit of the city and interpreted it to the satisfaction of rich and poor alike, was held in Berlin recently. “The most popular Berliner” is too slight a description for the simple working man, printer and lithograpliei. who became a black-and-white artist when well on towards middle age. His death at just over 70, full of years and honours, robs the people of their best beloved delineator, and the children of the poor of their kindest friend. Heinrich Zille was that rare German contributor to the popular weeklies, a non-political humorist. He took for Ins themes the Berlin no foreigner ever sees. His subjects were the small boy who carries out the bakers’ rolls before school, the small girl who minds the babies and has never known a handkerchief, the toothless but agile crone who wheels out Berlin’s evening papers for distribution in a dilapidated perambulator, the harassed housewife of one room, and her lord, out of work but suspiciously cheerful. Typical of his humour is one of his best-known cartoons of pre-war .days depicting a very stout lady with basket and shawl in the forefront of a crowd, being pressed back by a ferocious Parisian policeman: “Shout at me as much as you please. But don t touch me. I’m ticklish!”

His embarrassing attention to detail would have prohibited him the entry to the polite pages of “Punch” or any other English weekly, but Germans loved him for his broad humanity. His first commission was given him by a member of the Stinnes family, who recognised his genius; he enjoyed it when the servants who had insisted upon his using the back stairs would not let. him leave the kitchen until proofs of his identity had been established. He related with pride that when the war and the blockade were at their worst the kindest inquiries were made at his door by the shadiest individuals, implying that if he lacked anything from, coals to clothing, butter to potatoes, it could be supplied quickly and without payment. When the revolution came it left him unchange-’. in his attitude towards life as he saw it and drew it. The cheerfulness of poverty had always been his theme, and he abated nothing of his mellow kindliness, though he found occasion to give more and more help to his humble friends. Berlin, as he saw it, was harsh but good-tem-pered, ungracious but generous, hardworking but pleasure-loving, even when the pleasure consists only in a barrelorgan in a courtyard. The city is spending a great deal upon propaganda. A volume of Zille reproductions would be one of the finest’things it could give away to foreigners.