So sieht sie aus, mein Kind, diese Welt

These black-and-white poster designs were made by artist Friedl Dicker in 1932/1933. She made use of the photo collage technique. Text material and image are drastically condensed to clear and unambiguous statements as in ‘So sieht sie aus, mein Kind, diese Welt’ [This, my child, is how the world looks]. The picture of the new-born baby at the centre is surrounded by cut-out newspaper photographs. These are concentrically arranged around the infant. Below that are the heads of politicians such as Adolf Hitler, crowd scenes of marches, pregnant women, canons, squadrons of aircraft and the text: ‘THIS,MY CHILD, IS HOW THE WORLD LOOKS, THAT IS WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN BORN INTO, HERE THERE ARE THOSE BORN TO SHEAR AND THOSE BORN TO BE SHORN. THAT, MY CHILD, IS HOW IT LOOKS IN THIS WORLD OF OURS AND THAT OF OTHER COUNTRIES, AND IF YOU, MY CHILD, DO NOT LIKE IT, THEN YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO CHANGE IT.’ This design is part of a series of six so-called agitprop posters which Friedl Dicker made shortly before she joined the KPÖ, the Communist Party of Austria. The works are thus self-explanatory and concentrate on the crisis-laden reality of everyday life for the majority of the people at the time. Austrian artist Friedl Dicker worked in various studio cooperatives in Vienna and Berlin as an interior designer, designer, painter, graphic artist, set designer and teacher. Together with Franz Singer she realised interior decoration and architectural projects in the ‘Neue Bauen’ style. These included the Montessori kindergarten, ‘Goethehof’ in Vienna which set innovative benchmarks in function and design. Ten years later, in 1942, she repeated the text of this poster design on a postcard she wrote on her way to Theresienstadt. In 1944 she was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp.