Louis Raemaekers (April 6, 1869 – July 26, 1956) was a Dutch painter, caricaturist and editorial cartoonist for the Amsterdam newspaper De Telegraaf during World War I, noted for his anti-German stance.

[1] He was born and grew up in Roermond, Netherlands during a period of political and social unrest in the city, which at that time formed the battleground between Catholic clericalism and liberalism.

Louis’ father published a weekly journal called De Volksvriend (Friend of the People) and was an influential man in liberal circles.

His battle against the establishment set the tone for his son's standpoint several decades later, when he fought against the occupation of neutral Belgium at the start of the First World War.

In 1906 his life took a decisive turn when he accepted the invitation to draw political cartoons for leading Dutch newspapers, first from 1906 to 1909 for the Algemeen Handelsblad and from 1909 onwards for De Telegraaf.

But the pressure on him continued, also from Germany: in September 1915 the rumor even started circulating that the German government had offered a reward of 12,000 guilders for Raemaekers, dead or alive, but proof of an official statement has never been found.

Raemaekers became an instant celebrity and his drawings were the talk of the town: ‘they formed the subject of pulpit addresses, and during two months, the galleries where they have been exhibited have been thronged to excess.

Henceforth, the Dutch government could distance itself from the cartoonist and his work in its diplomatic relations, thus stabilising its position vis-à-vis Germany, while Raemaekers himself could cease his hopeless campaign to get the Netherlands to abandon its neutral stance.

He saw the pitiable stream of refugees which poured from desolated Belgium across the Dutch frontier; and he heard the tale of the abominations which they had suffered from their own lips.

[7] From the summer of 1916 onwards efforts were made to distribute Raemaekers' work in the most powerful of the neutral countries, the United States.

[9] Statistics show that by October 1917, more than two thousand American newspapers had published Raemaekers’ cartoons in hundreds of millions of copies.

He had not been forgotten in the Netherlands, but it was only on his eightieth birthday, in 1949, that his native country gave him the recognition that he had long desired: he was made an honorary citizen of the City of Roermond.

Outside that circle of the great, Louis Raemaekers stands conspicuous as the one man who, without any assistance of title or office, indubitably swayed the destinies of peoples.’ [14]