1942 Koehler & Ancona "This is the Enemy" Poster
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GUEST:
In 2003, I went to a bachelor farmer's estate auction in northeast Iowa. He had about 25 years of early-century "National Geographics," which I collected. When the "National Geographics" came up, it was between me and another guy, and I think we both wanted the "National Geographics," but they had thrown a whole bunch of other boxes and mostly paper things together. In 2003, for $117-- I remember because I had $125, and I thought, "That's all I can go"-- I got the "National Geographics." But in the boxes, looking through, I got about 20 posters. And this is one of them. They've been kind of in my closet since then.
APPRAISER:
It is a World War II poster, and it was designed in 1942 by Karl Koehler and Victor Ancona. And in the sort of pantheon of imagery from Second World War images, this one is really one of the more haunting. They're trying to vilify the enemy, and the psychological concept behind that is, the more that we hate the enemy, the more willing we are to enlist and fight in the war. And so they say, "This is the Enemy," and they depict this weasel-like Nazi officer with his beaky nose, and in his very Germanic monocle, you see a man hanging from the gallows. Everything about it exudes nastiness, and yet it does it in a compelling way.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And it really does impress upon us the fact that this man is not a nice man. It's such a wonderful way to do a horrible image. It resonates for that. And when I say that it resonates, it doesn't just resonate with me. This image was entered into a very prominent national poster competition in 1942, sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. So not a fly-by-night institution, by any means.
GUEST:
Sure, sure.
APPRAISER:
And this was the winning entry. Now, when the government printed posters for the war effort, they printed tens of thousands of images to distribute all around the country. When the museum printed these, or when they were printed after the competition, we don't know how many were printed, but intuitively, it was a lot less. So this is much scarcer…
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
…than other World War II posters. When this comes up at auction-- not in a military sale-- but when this comes up for auction in a poster auction, or in a graphic design auction-- which it does fairly frequently...
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
...it sells for between $4,000 and $6,000.
GUEST:
Okay, oh, wow.
APPRAISER:
In fact, the high-water mark for this piece is $8,400, which it sold for in 2009.
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