Erich Schilling, Im bayerischen Kyffhäuser

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‘Im bayerischen Kyffhäuser’ (‘In the Bavarian Kyffhäuser’).
Biography: Erich Schilling

Original drawing by Schilling, depicted in Simplicissimus, 11 February 1924, 28. Jahrgang, Nummer 46.
The cartoon was published after Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923; Hitler stayed in the Landsberg Prison and it was 15 days before the start of the ‘Beer Hall Putsch Trial’ in Munich.

Notice the Bavarian Crown on the table (the last King of Bavaria ruled until 1918). The swastika’s (ravens) circling the summit of the mountain, and the sleeping Gustav Ritter von Kahr, State Commissioner of Bavaria from 26 March 1923 to 16 February 1924. Von Kahr (1862 – 1934) was a German right-wing politician who helped turn post World War I Bavaria into Germany’s center of radical-nationalism, but was then instrumental in the collapse and suppression of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923; in the revenge for the latter, he was murdered later in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. The text on the cover of the book reads: ‘Bayerische Belangen’ (‘Bavarian Interests’).

The Kyffhäuser legend, or the Barbarossa Myth
Kyffhäuser, or the Kyffhäusergebirge, is a hill range in Central Germany, south-east of the Harz mountains. It has significance in German traditional mythology as the legendary resting place of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
According to the king-asleep-in-mountain legend, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (who actually drowned on 10 June 1190 in the Calycadnus River near Seleukeia in Asia Minor during the Third Crusade) is not in fact dead, but sleeps in a hidden chamber underneath the Kyffhäuser hills. He sits motionless at a stone table and his beard has supposedly grown so long over the centuries that it grew through the table. As in the similar legend of King Arthur, Barbarossa supposedly awaits Germany’s hour of greatest need, when he will emerge once again from under the hill. The presence of ravens circling the Kyffhäuser summit is said to be a sign of Barbarossa’s continuing presence.
The Barbarossa myth was first documented in the late 17th century, and became later the expression of the desire for the Holy Roman Empire re-emergence as a German nation state.

‘Im bayerischen Kyffhäuser’, published in Simplicissimus, 11 February 1924, 28. Jahrgang, Nummer 46. The text below the depiction reads: ‘Solange noch flucht und zetert, des Hitler graue Schar, solange bleibt verzaubert des generalstaatskahr‘ (‘As long as the grey mass of Hitler’s followers is yelling and shouting, the State Commissioner of Bavaria Kahr will stay bewitched’).

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