{"id":5062,"date":"2026-07-22T19:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/?p=5062"},"modified":"2026-08-13T13:43:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:43:05","slug":"of-comic-strips-and-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2026\/07\/22\/of-comic-strips-and-antisemitism\/","title":{"rendered":"From the YIVO Stacks: Of Comic Strips and Antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Kotick, Leon Levy Fellow at the Center for Jewish History (2025-2026)<\/h3>\n

From the YIVO Stacks: Of Comic Strips and Antisemitism<\/h2>\n

A 1926 antisemitic pamphlet documents the antisemitic moral controversy surrounding the Jewish publishers that helped pioneer early French comic strips.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the collections of YIVO Library at the Center for Jewish History rests an unassuming, yet unsettling French pamphlet from 1926 titled Juifs et Chr\u00e9tiens inconciliables<\/em> (“Jews and Christians: Irreconcilable\u201d), written by lawyer and political polemicist Albert Letellier. The text is unusual and unstable: part courtroom transcript recollection, part antisemitic diatribe, and part documentary record of a public controversy that has largely faded from public memory. For historians of law, media, and antisemitism, however, it preserves a revealing episode in the formative period of comics and illustrated publishing in France.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a><\/p>\n

Albert Letellier. Juifs et Chr\u00e9tiens inconciliables. Paris: E. Gr\u00fcnd, 1926, XIII. Collection of YIVO Library.<\/p>\n

Much of the pamphlet recounts Letellier\u2019s legal defense of the publishing house of the Offenstadt brothers, a Jewish family of Bavarian origin, who became major figures in the French popular press at the turn of the twentieth century. Through magazines such as L\u2019\u00c9patant<\/em>, Fillette, L\u2019Intr\u00e9pide,<\/em> and Le Petit Illustr\u00e9<\/em>, the Offenstadt Fr\u00e8res publishing house helped popularize illustrated children\u2019s periodicals, and more specifically, serialized comic strips, or bande dessin\u00e9e<\/em>, for French readers. In 1908, L\u2019\u00c9patant <\/em>began publishing Louis Forton\u2019s Les Pieds Nickel\u00e9s<\/em> (\u201cNickel-Plated Feet, akin to \u201cThe Lazy Bums\u201d), now considered one of the foundational works in the history of French comic strips.<\/p>\n

\"Page<\/a><\/p>\n

Quote from the text: \u201cEt ici, je revendique en toute ind\u00e9pendance le droit de dire, sans fard, mon opinion. Je ne suis nullement antis\u00e9mite dans un sens individuel, personnel. Mais quant \u00e0 leur fa\u00e7on de penser et d\u2019agir en masse, oui je la consid\u00e8re avec quelque insistance. Car je les connais trop pour n\u2019en avoir pas peur.\u201d
\n<\/em>Here, I assert my right, with full independence, to say my opinion plainly. I am no antisemite in an individual or personal sense. But as for their way of thinking and acting as a group, yes, I consider myself one quite insistently. Because I know them too well not to be afraid of them.<\/em><\/small>
\nAlbert Letellier. Juifs et Chr\u00e9tiens inconciliables. Paris: E. Gr\u00fcnd, 1926, XIII. Collection of YIVO Library.<\/p>\n

Despite their popularity, Juifs et Chr\u00e9tiens inconciliables <\/em>is far from a celebration of publishing innovation. Letellier\u2019s pamphlet reproduces legal proceedings stemming from libel suits and defamation charges that conservative critics brought against the family, whom they accused of obscenity and the moral corruption of French youth. A sustained legal and press campaign united republican moral reformers and the Catholic right, who continually denounced the Offenstadts as \u201cJudeo-German pornographers.\u201d In 1909, the Offenstadts were convicted of obscenity and fined for sexually explicit advertisements for titles in their catalogue unrelated to their comics periodicals. Moral reformer Ren\u00e9 Berenger used his influence as a senator to petition to have Offenstadt titles barred from sale in railway stations. Catholic polemicist Abb\u00e9 Louis Bethl\u00e9em embarked on a decades-long campaign to censor the same publications, routinely denouncing them as moral poison for French children. The family fought back, and routinely countersued their detractors for defamation, to the chagrin of local magistrates.<\/p>\n

Letellier narrates events having served as the Offenstadts\u2019 legal counsel. For his part, the author equivocates, trying to reconcile liberal republican universalism and defense of basic rights with his categorical, but supposedly \u201cimpersonal\u201d hostility towards Jews as a group. He ultimately concludes that such a reconciliation is not possible. The pamphlet\u2019s title is not ironic: even while defending the Offenstadt family from specific accusations, Letellier reproduced the same assumptions about Jewish separateness and supposed nefarious influence that animated the attacks against them in the first place.<\/p>\n

The contradictions in Letellier\u2019s thought are precisely what makes his pamphlet historically edifying. By the time of its publication, the Offenstadt family had become a lightning rod for much bigger anxieties about modern mass culture and society: the commercialization of leisure; the rapid proliferation of visual media; uncertainties about changing gender norms and expressions of sexuality; and collective worries about family relations and children\u2019s welfare in an age of mass entertainment. The family\u2019s public prominence as publishers and as Jews of \u201cforeign\u201d origin emboldened critics to fuse these uncertainties into a conspiratorial grand narrative about national decline at the hands of an enemy that was both alien and embedded within.<\/p>\n

The controversy bears strange, striking parallels to later moral panic directed at comic books in the post-war United States, where moral critics portrayed comics as catalysts for juvenile delinquency, sexual deviance, and the decay of traditional authority. Both in France and the United States, public suspicions converged upon prominent Jewish publishers who helped shape industry standards. Decades before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency targeted EC Comics\u2019 Bill Gaines, the \u201cOffenstadt Affair\u201d inflamed antisemitic passions anew in France to intertwine fears of national decline with Jewish commercial influence and alleged civilizational incompatibilities.<\/p>\n

Today, the Offenstadt family is primarily canonized as pioneers of bande dessin\u00e9e<\/em> and children\u2019s publishing. Letellier\u2019s pamphlet reminds us, however, that the early history of French bande dessin\u00e9e<\/em> was not solely a story of creative vision and commercial innovation. It was also deeply entangled in political struggles over immigration, religion, morality, and national belonging in modern France. The pamphlet captures a moment when comics and illustrated humor for children became contested sites of larger anxieties about collective identity and culture. It offers an unsettling reminder of how easily prejudice and exclusion can be folded into fears about mass media and social change. And one of the few surviving copies in the U.S. rests on the shelves at 15 West 16th<\/sup> Street.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Selected Sources<\/h4>\n

Groensteen, Thierry. La bande dessin\u00e9e en France \u00e0 la Belle \u00e9poque. 1880-1914. <\/em>Brussels: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2022.<\/p>\n

Le Collectionneur de bandes dessin\u00e9es <\/em>no. 35 (Novembre 1982): 13\u201330.<\/p>\n

Letellier, Albert. Juifs et Chr\u00e9tiens inconciliables<\/em>. Paris: E. Gr\u00fcnd, 1926, XIII. Available through YIVO Main Stacks: 000023309.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Kotick, Leon Levy Fellow at the Center for Jewish History (2025-2026) From the YIVO Stacks: Of Comic Strips and Antisemitism A 1926 antisemitic pamphlet documents the antisemitic moral controversy surrounding the Jewish publishers that helped pioneer early French comic strips. In the collections of YIVO Library at the Center for Jewish History rests an unassuming, yet unsettling French pamphlet from 1926 titled…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-5062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5062"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5088,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions\/5088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}