[Little Joker Smoking Tobacco]

More Than Meets the Eye: History of Maryland Through Prints, 1750-1900
Room 1: Immigrants in Maryland

Maryland Historical Society
Library of Maryland History
201 W. Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-685-3750
Fax: 410-385-2105
E-mail: library @mdhs.org

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Maryland History In Prints: 1752-1900
by Laura Rice

[Little Joker Smoking Tobacco]

[after] Ludwig Knaus
[possibly A. Hoen & Co.]
Baltimore, ca. 1880

Lithograph, printed in colors

This advertisement is based on a painting by Ludwig Knaus, a well-known German artist. Here, his painting, A Shrewd Bargain, has been adapted as an advertisement for "Little Joker Smoking Tobacco," manufactured and sold by the Baltimore firm of Gail and Ax. Their products, including snuff and chewing and smoking tobacco, were marketed largely to German-American clientele up and down the East coast. Knaus's original image was altered as little as possible; a box of tobacco has been placed in the boy's hand, and an advertisement for Little Joker Tobacco appears on the wall near the window. By downplaying the size of the actual advertising copy, customers would be tempted to hang the image in a home or office space as decoration, and, the company hoped, provide a constant reminder of a favored brand name.

A Shrewd Bargain was painted in 1878, a time of economic depression and political upheaval in Germany. Playing off the fear and anger generated by the economic climate, Lutheran minister Adolph Stocker founded the Christian Social Working-man's Union. Stocker and his party maintained that the basis of political life is faith, and to achieve a completely moral community each member must share a common religion. The Christian majority, then, must exclude Jews from citizenship and public office and restrict them to closed communities as a "nation within a nation." This was the first political party in Germany to formally incorporate anti-Semitism into its platform.

Knaus's depiction of an elderly man, a dealer in second-hand goods, teaching his young listener about becoming rich, conveys the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the time. The physical features of both characters are those common in negative Jewish stereotypes; the motif of the old miser was also traditionally used to depict socially marginal groups in a poor light. Between 1881 and 1890, more than 24,000 Jews arrived in Baltimore, many fleeing persecution in Czarist Russia. Many of the newcomers were poor and most spoke little English. Although anti-Semitic violence was rare here, social discrimination against eastern-European Jews was commonplace.

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Room 1: Immigrants in Maryland
Room 2: Evangelical Religion and Reform
Room 3: Rowdies and Riots
Room 4: Changes in the Land
Exhibit Home Page
CONTENTS for Room 1
1. Baltimore Schuetzen-Park
2. The Great Fight, between Tom Hyer & Yankee Sullivan, for $10,000
3. Asking if I would ever dare to be 'sassy' to the Sisters again
4. Isaac McKim's Free School
5. [Little Joker Smoking Tobacco]
6. The Oddfellow's March
7. Masquerade Ball of Harmony Circle
8. Church of St. John the Evangelist