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PROPAGANDA COPY OF KARL GOETZ'S 'LUSITANIA MEDALLION'
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This month’s object on display in the Museum is one of
300,000 copies of Karl Goetz’s ‘Lusitania Medallion’
cast and distributed in England as part of an
anti-German propaganda campaign following the sinking of
the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania by a German submarine in
May 1915. Original medallions made in Germany are very
scarce. There is one on display in the Imperial War
Museum and another in the British Museum’s collection.
Background
At approximately 2.10 p.m. on Friday 7 May 1915 the RMS
Lusitania (30,396 tons), with 1,951 passengers and crew
on board, was off the south coast of Ireland on a return
voyage from New York to Liverpool when she was hit
amidships by a torpedo fired by the German submarine,
U20. The ship sank within 20 minutes. 1,201 men, women
and children perished, not 1,198 as initially thought,
including 128 US citizens.
The sinking of the unarmed Lusitania was greeted in
Britain with shock, anger and indignation, inspiring an
abundance of anti-German propaganda and provoking a
powerful emotional commitment in the US to the Allied
cause, although it was still another two years before
the US entered the war. Anti-German feeling was further
exacerbated when a little-known Munich medallist called
Karl Goetz privately cast and issued the original
‘Lusitania Medallion’. In doing so, he erroneously
recorded 5 May 1915 on the obverse of the medallion as
the date of the sinking.
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The RMS Lusitania
British intelligence was quick to exploit the date
error as evidence that the fate of the Lusitania had
involved advanced planning and that it was pre-meditated
and pre-arranged. British intelligence was also happy to
mislead public opinion further about the status of
Goetz’s medallion stating that its introduction had been
sanctioned as an official commemoration of the sinking
which implied national approval for it.
British replicas of the ‘Lusitania Medallion’, such as
the one on display in the Museum, were sold in an
attractive cardboard presentation box for a shilling
each, the proceeds being donated to St Dunstan’s Blinded
Soldiers and Sailors Hostels and the Red Cross. The
inside of the lid of the box bore 16 lines of
anti-German propagandist text including the statement
that the medallion was ‘proof positive that such crimes
[as the sinking of the Lusitania] are not merely
regarded favourably, but are given every encouragement
in the land of Kultur’.
The Medallion
Goetz’s original medallions were 56.5 mm in diameter and
between 2-3 mm thick. The obverse depicts the stricken
Lusitania sinking, her stern submerged, while her bow,
supposedly laden with armaments, rises clear of the
water. This depiction is contrary to eye-witness
accounts which stated that the ship went down bow first.
The text around the upper edge, ‘Keine Bann Ware!’,
translates as ‘No Contraband Goods!’. The text at the
bottom of the obverse translates as ‘The liner Lusitania
sunk by a German submarine 5 May 1915’. The reverse of
the medallion shows Death, in the form of a skeleton,
issuing tickets to passengers behind the ticket office
counter of the Cunard Line in New York.
Much of the background information above originates
courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.
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The Obverse of the Medallion |
The Reverse of the Medallion |
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