Esseö, Elisabeth (Erzsébet) von. 1923.
DIE ･ SCHWARZE ･ SCHMACH ･ 1919 -- 1923 ･ (Black Humiliation 1919 - 1923). Cast bronze, chocolate-brown patina, 73 mm, 101.85 g. Gußfrisch (as cast). Very rare.
Obverse: Full face of African man, eyes half-lidded, lips slightly open, materializing from surface field; below visage two spermatozoa swim up diverging left and right; title legend encircling edge; dates lower center edge.
Reverse: Female figure turned slightly to right, clad only in diaphanous palla draped over head, left hand raised to brow; at her feet, left and right, tangles of serpents; artist's monogram encircled, ligatured ƎE in exergue.
Cf Huszár, Lajos, and Béla Procopius. 1932. Medaillen- und Plakettenkunst in Ungarn, p. 201: 1952.
This medal refers to the French occupation of the Rhineland (1919 - 1923), in part by African colonial troops. Germans considered garrison of these "racially inferior" soldiers a deliberate humiliation, and the press sensationalized and exaggerated incidence of crime, sexual and otherwise, as shaming, especially to German women. Children born of liaisons, consensual or not, between French-African men and German women were referred to as die
Rheinlandbastarden (Rhineland bastards), and many were later sterilized under the Nazi regime.
