103024 | GERMANY, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY & RUSSIA. "Bolshevism" bronze Medal.

103024  |  GERMANY, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY & RUSSIA. "Bolshevism" bronze Medal. Issued 1919. "Bolschewismus" (69mm, 89.99 g, 12h). By Elisabeth von Esseö.

 

Winged demon grinning over a mass of humanity fiercely fighting amongst themselves // 1918 - 1919 horizontally dividing the vertically written БОЛЬШЕВИЗМЪ. Edge: Plain.

 

Klose –; The Art of Devastation –; Frankenhuis 1531; Jones, Dance of Death 43; Jones, The Art of the Medal 408; The Medal 54 (Spring 2009) p. 8 (fig. 7). Choice Mint State. Deep brown surfaces, with some lighter hues upon the higher points. An exceptionally rare and extremely haunting issue from a very popular and sought after female medallist.

 

Ex David Baruch Simpson Collection.

 

Following Germany's defeat in World War I, Esseö, just like some of her contemporary artists, looked to the east at the post-war chaos occurring at the hands of the Bolsheviks in Russia, equating it with "demonic violence and mayhem" (Attwood in The Medal 54, p. 8). There, the ruling elites were driven brutally from power and, in the case of the czar and his family, to their deaths. As Wilhelm II was forced to flee, ending the over-700-year-rule of the House of Wittelsbach in the German realms, the situation seemed as though it could happen in Germany as well. It would turn out that Bolshevism wouldn't come there, but national socialism, along with the rise of Hitler just over a decade later, would prove the demonic figure presented on this medal all too true.

 

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Upload: 1 October 2025.

 

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