Carl Böckli: ‘Let us have cheap schnapps!’, cover of the Nebelspalter of 16 September 1927.
Nebelspalter Verlag Horn

The Nebelspalter now faced the difficult task of making its position known – without saying anything explicitly. Bö succeeded in this high-wire act by wrapping up his views in subtle imagery and combining his drawings with a minimum of textual commentary. On the cover of the 23 June 1939 issue Bö demonstrated how, as an editor, he muzzled himself every day: ‘Morning workout for editors, brought in since the ban on the SZ am Sonntag: You take a chair / And park your mouth on it!’ The banned newspaper he referred to was the Schweizer-Zeitung am Sonntag, published in Basel.

BETWEEN RESISTING AND ADAPTING

With his caricature of the little Alpine boy in the grip of a set of pincers, for the cover of the issue of 15 January 1942 Bö created a powerful image summing up the position of neutral Switzerland. To highlight the ominous embrace of the warring powers, beneath the drawing he placed four words, brief and concise: ‘Kleiner Kommentar zur Lage’ (A little comment on the situation). As early as 1938 Bö encapsulated, in the figure of the little Alpine boy with his distinctive Sennenchäppi headgear, the ‘Geistige Landesverteidigung’ (‘spiritual defence’ movement in Switzerland). This naive child can say or do cheeky and audacious things that no one else is allowed to do.

The caricature ‘Superneutrality’ on the cover of the 4 June 1942 issue makes clear, in its absurdity, that press censorship can go so far that, in extreme cases, it’s no longer possible to report anything about the events of the war. Reporting is filtered in such a way that it degenerates into empty sentences: ‘…and now the English news: The English news agency reports: nothing to report!’

Pia Schubiger

Fighting the Nazis with the mighty pen