page_title: Friedrich Graetz
section_title: Puck
hierarchical_section_title: Friedrich Graetz / Career / Puck
caption_attribution_description: English: Title The anti-Chinese wall--The American wall goes up as the Chinese original goes down / F. Grätz. Summary A cartoon showing laborers, among whom are Irishmen, an African American, a Civil War veteran, Italian, Frenchman, and a Jew, building a wall against the Chinese. Congressional mortar is used to mount blocks of prejudice, non-reciprocity, law against race, fear, etc. Across the sea, a ship flying the American flag enters China, as the Chinese knock down their own wall and permit trade of such goods as rice, tea, and silk.
context_page_description: Friedrich Graetz or Grätz was an Austrian illustrator and cartoonist. His best-known works appeared in Viennese satirical magazines such as Kikeriki and Der Floh, and in the American magazine Puck.
  Puck was the first magazine to print cartoons in color.
  Many of Graetz's cartoons were political, targeting issues of government responsibility and public health and urging social change.
context_section_description: Graetz was hired by Joseph Keppler on a three-year contract, to work for the popular magazine Puck in New York. Keppler, who was also from Austria, established the German-language magazine in 1871, publishing the first English-language edition in 1877.  Graetz's illustrations appear in Puck between March 1882 and March 1885.  Graetz's images, like those of Joseph Keppler and Carl Edler von Stur in Puck, depict complex scenes in which a number of characters are involved in unfolding action. 
  In Puck, as in the early Kikeriki, humor was intentionally used to press for both political and social change. Topics reflected the interests and political positions of Keppler and other senior staff, and Keppler closely reviewed others' work before it went to publication, influencing both content and style with "a strong guiding hand". Among the areas of public health addressed by Friedrich Graetz's cartoons in  Puck are unsanitary conditions; disease, quarantine and immigration; and adulteration of foodstuffs. 
  Graetz's cartoon "The Anti-Chinese Wall: The American wall goes up as the Chinese original goes down" caricatures a group including Irish, African American, French, and Jewish laborers. They are shown building a wall against the Chinese at the same time that the Chinese are removing their own barriers to trade. The lettering on the blocks includes "Fear", "Non Reciprocity", "Law Against Race" and "Congressional Blunders". 
  Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and was manipulating prejudice and fear against minority groups to support anti-Chinese trade policies. 
  Graetz's cartoon has been used to examine recurring political debates across time.
  Cholera was particularly feared for its high rate of mortality,  and because its cause of infection was not yet known.  A major epidemic was occurring in Egypt at the time this cartoon was drawn.  Graetz's illustration "The Kind of 'Assisted Emigrant' We Can Not Afford to Admit" personifies cholera as a skeletal invader in the foreground of the cartoon, but does not demonize or blame immigrants. The deadly disease is opposed by an array of tiny figures: a boat representing the Board of Health, cannons loaded with carbolic acid, thymol and chloride of lime, and a frail line of human defenders. The building in the illustration has been identified as Castle Clinton, an immigrant processing center in the Battery Park area of New York City.
  A flag entitled "Freedom of thought" flies above the conflict in Friedrich Graetz's cartoon "An appalling attempt to muzzle the watch-dog of science" (1883). The caption notes that The Society for the Suppression of Blasphemous Literature proposed to prosecute professors such as physicist John Tyndall, biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, and sociologist Herbert Spencer for sowing "widespread unbelief, and in some cases rank atheism" through the expression of their views on science and religion. In the  cartoon, Spencer is shown as a monumental dog, guarding the doors of scientific enlightenment.  His detractors surround him with muzzles.
  Graetz's cartoon "The Alchemist of the Past, and the Alchemist of the Present" targeted food adulteration practices by commercial chemists and hinted at the need for regulation, as a matter of public health. The Alchemist of the Past, as noted in the illustration, could not make gold out of anything, but the Alchemist of the Present profits by making things out of almost everything.  In the cartoon "Dr. Cashdown Mixer, Analytical Chemist" is collecting payments from a number of well-dressed gentlemen, while above him on the wall are the results of some of his work, "Analysis Tea," "Analysis Coffee," and "Analysis Oilymargarine". "Coffee" is listed as consisting predominantly of chicory and beans, while "flour" consists almost entirely of plaster of paris and chalk.
  Eugene Zimmerman recalls Graetz as "an elderly gentleman with short-cropped hair and abundant red whiskers."  
  Zimmerman considered Graetz to be "an excellent pen-and-ink artist but too careful in detail for an American comic paper". Graetz was unf
caption: "The Anti-Chinese Wall" , March  29, 1882
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