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him, Dieses Glacéhandschuh Idyll muss endlich in the book, e Political Cartoons of Derso and Figure 3. Derso
einmal au ören! -- ‘This kid glove idyll must Kelen: Years of Hope and Despair, by Stefan Slater and Kelen,
cease once and for all!’. Only a small number and David Macfadyen that British art publisher, l’Assaut de la
attended Lux’s funeral because, said Kelen, Lund Humphries, produced in 2023. The image Tribune, 1936,
‘few were left who thought it remarkable or sad is reproduced above. reproduced from a
that a man should stand in the temple of the photograph of the
last best hope for peace and take his life’. These The mural features 50 political personalities who original artwork,
incidents remained firmly fixed in Kelen’s mind. played a part in the events of this consequential © Mme Stampfli.2
In his memoir, he recounted them alongside his year and nine journalists, all named in the
account of l’Assaut de la Tribune. This suggests work. As in Daumier’s lithograph, the scene is
they may have inspired the mural, as does their centred on politicians ascending left and right
occurrence around the time he and Derso began staircases to reach the rostrum, while others
to work on it. use ladders to climb the wall, as in l’Escalade. In
interpreting Derso and Kelen’s satirical cartoons,
In the memoir, Kelen records that, as a young it’s important to look at the margins. In the
cartoonist, he attempted to provide graphic detail lower left corner, Mussolini stands dressed for
‘as much in the manner of Daumier as possible’. battle, next to Hitler and Stalin, who ignore the
Honoré Daumier published a lithograph in politicians seeking to broadcast their views to the
1849 depicting characters of the Assembly of world. Hitler has gambled and thrown the dice,
the newly-established Second French Republic. but Stalin faces him defiantly. Towering over
He named it l’Assaut de la Tribune (Figure 2 left them is French socialist, Léon Jouhaux. Glaring
page). at the Duce, is Neville Chamberlain, then British
Finance Minister; and, in armour at his side, his
The similarity to the Derso and Kelen mural Foreign Office colleague, Viscount Cranborne.
will be obvious; eager politicians on the left and
right, struggle to reach the rostrum. There is also Derso and Kelen were accredited journalists and
a commonality between European politics of the there’s a hint of bias in their depiction, top left,
two eras. The political movement of 1848/49, of the international press as the cavalry riding
which Daumier’s cartoon illustrates, was a to defend freedom of speech. Mounted on
struggle for democracy in Europe. horseback are Clarence Streit of the New York
Times; Robert Dell of the Manchester Guardian;
Just before Christmas 2021, Jean-Claude Pallas Sisley Huddleston who wrote for e Times and
carried the large photo of the mural under his the Christian Science Monitor; the prominent
arm to the Mairie at Aigre (Charente) where he Bolshevik publicist Karl Radek; the famous
was able to produce a high-resolution digitised Jules Sauerwein of Le Matin; Élie Joseph Bois of
copy, with the kind permission of the mayor of Le Petit Parisien; ‘Pertinax’, pseudonym of the
the commune. This is the photograph, prepared prominent French journalist, André Géraud;
for publishing by the photographer Jeffrey Geneviève Tabouis, the first woman to achieve
Lawrence, that appears as a high-quality image international distinction as a journalist; and

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