South German liberals, who looked at the North German Confederation from the outside in 1868, were unimpressed by the compromises struck between Bismarck and the National Liberals north of the River Main. In this political cartoon from April of that year, the National Liberals are portrayed as “grave-diggers”: they have interred free speech, parliamentary control of military budgets, Electoral Hesse’s constitution of 1831, self-determination for Schleswig-Holstein, and, as the title reads, “much else besides.” This caricature originally appeared in the Münchener Punsch.
Source: “Das alles ruht, und noch manches andere – Aus den Werken der
nationalliberalen Todtengräber” [“That all lies at Rest, and Many Other
Things, Too – From the Works of the National Liberal Gravediggers of
Death”]. Caricature (no date), from
Punsch, Munich, April 12,
1868.
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