Coal theft
The coal theft is the caricature of a coal thief from the time of the Second World War , with which energy saving was advertised. The figure created by Wilhelm Hohnhausen and his advertising agency Arbeitsgemeinschaft Hohnhausen in Stuttgart was intended to convey that an energy waster steals coal from the Volksgemeinschaft . She made clear use of the association with the black man .
Use in propaganda
A propaganda campaign aimed at saving fuel began in Germany on December 7, 1942 under the slogan “Fight against coal stealing” . In order to secure the necessary energy supply for the war machine, a specially founded propaganda department tried to persuade people to save. Great efforts have been made in this regard.
The printed series of the episodes of coal stealing was published in many daily newspapers. In addition to a caricature of Kohlenklau, a short, rhymed text taught how to save energy. Most of the short stories ended with the warning: “There is nothing more he can do here - watch out, now he's looking for other things!” Later, scenes of wasting energy were executed and the reader was finally addressed: “Now hold the mirror in front of your face - Is it you or is it not you? "
Contributions to the youth magazine Hilf mit! Were also part of the campaign . , Educational films on the subject of “coal theft” as well as two games that should make the subject understandable, especially for children and young people. On the one hand, it was a quartet game with motifs that represented positive and negative behavior in dealing with energy and was played according to classic quartet rules, as well as the board game Jagd auf Kohlenklau .
Persistent popularity
The figure remained popular in the post-war period , but this time it was about stealing coal from trains or trucks to alleviate the worst misery. In his New Year's Eve sermon in 1946, the Cologne Cardinal Joseph Frings presented this type of “organizing” as an excusable mouth robbery in times of need , from which the vernacular derived the word “ fringsen ”.
In Saarland mid-1950s was during the vote on the Saar Statute refers to the French neighbors as "Kohlenklau" because the French mining company of France from coal under saarländischem area mined to have.
Word derivatives
Numerous, often ironic, derivations existed, even during the war, for example, hero theft or the term idea theft .
literature
Web links
- A school essay from 1943 with a drawing of Kohlenklau
- Extensive collection of film, image and text material on coal theft
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin Rüther: Collecting and saving, observing and denouncing: Children and young people in the war. In: Johanna Cremer (Ed.): Kölner Stadtmuseum: Boards that mean the world. Playing through 2000 years of Cologne. Cologne City Museum, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059213-3 .