A Gruesome Cartoon from 1908

In the first year of the Great War, propagandists used the imagery in this caricature of a baby skewered on a bayonet. They applied it to German soldiers in Belgium in 1914.1 This cartoon, however, appeared in the German satirical magazine Simplicissimus in June 1908.2 The caption reads, “If this keeps up, the Prussians will treat us the way we treat the Ruthenians.” The last term referred more or less to Ukrainians in the Habsburg monarchy,3 but who was “us”? Presumably Poles, because the cartoon is titled “The Poor Poles”, and there were Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews in these parts. Whether “Prussians” referred to people from the Kingdom of Prussia or Germany more generally is hard to say without more context. In any case, I have questions. What past and future events was the speaker in this cartoon alleging, imagining, predicting? How did the artist, Olaf Gulbransson, come to use the gruesome imagery we see here? Are there other prewar examples of it in Europe…? See John Horne and…