Word: simple
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Dates: during 1946-1946
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...Munich, a few days after the Reichstag Fire, six grave men held a meeting. They were the owners of, and chief contributors to, Germany's famous political-satirical magazine-the weekly Simplicissimus, whose biting, brilliant cartoons had ridiculed human stupidity since 1896. Now, the owners of ' Simpl" had met to find an answer to the gravest question human stupidity had ever put to them: "What shall we do when here, too, the Nazis take over?" Simplicissimus' founder, stalwart Thomas Theodor Heine, put the reply calmly: "One simply has to go into exile-pauper fashion...
...reflecting too faithfully "the physiognomy of the reigning class, [of] too ostentatious Government officials . . . officers . . . Junkers [and] the subservient spirit of the small bourgeoisie." In this tradition, Simplicissimus also faithfully recorded each new step in Adolf Hitler's rise to power-a rise which Simpl found too ludicrous to be believable...
...years passed and the menace of Hitler became unmistakable, Editor Schoenberner experienced the pain of watching most of Simpl's staff succumb slowly but surely to the enemy. Strange palsies seized the hands of cartoonists when they were asked to depict Hitler; a poet who had made Germany laugh with his verses "On Hitler's Mustache" took to wearing a brown shirt. When Hitler's minions broke into the offices to tear them apart, they found a magazine that was already dead by its own hand...
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