It’s October 3, also known as “Tag der Deutschen Einheit” or the German national day. Compared to similar celebrations in countries like France or the United States, ours is a pretty toned-down holiday.Which I think is refreshing. Cartoons on these celebrations of unity often stress the fact that the Western and Eastern parts of Germany aren’t that united in reality (e.g. this one).
This year, it’s not only the 20th anniversary of the unification, the holiday also coincides with a violent conflict between citizens of Stuttgart trying to stop the construction of a new railway station and the police (mentioned in this cartoon). Images with the Stuttgart demonstrations resonate strangely with the images of the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig. This is, of course, something the organizers have been aiming at. Still, the fact that Rüdiger Grube, head of the German railway in return aggressively dismisses the people’s right to protest further adds to the association of the two events. Even if there are hardly any real similarities between today’s protest and the protest 20 years ago. Click here to see all cartoons on the situation in Stuttgart.
Apart from that, we introduced a new column to our blog.. In “Letter from X”, toonpool.com members will answer questions about their everyday life to Nicoleta Ionescu. So far, Nicoleta’s questionnaire has been filled in by Gorpur from the Faroe Islands and by No Para Innita from Colombia. There will be more of these next week.
Introducing…
Lubomir Kotrha from Slovakia may not have chosen an avatar yet, but he already uploaded over thirty cartoons. His mostly digitally colored works either deal with banks or with football. Seeing so many variations on a topic by a single artist is pretty interesting and, if you look at them for a while, you will notice some similarities (especially in these two cartoons). Here are some other bank cartoons (1,2,3) as well as some soccer cartoons (1,2,3).
Cartoons of Interest
This week, my favourite cartoon is “Kung Fu” by Sergey Elkin from Moscow. While I think that it would work perfectly without the backstory added by the book titles, this is just another great quiet cartoon. A stunning combination of action and inaction. By the way.. I think that he is doing praying mantis style kung fu but what is her style of choice?
Please docheck out Piero Tonin’s “Chicken and the Food Pyramid”. I know that it was actually posted last week.. But I didn’t write an article then and this one is really funny. There’s also another pictogram cartoon by Joruju Piroshiki about the emergency exit guy stealing the bathroom lady.
© toonpool.comTags: last week, letter from, letzte woche, Stuttgart
