Approaching Children’s Drawings Methodologically as Repositories of Events: The Sinking of the “Lusitania” and Other Drawings From 1915

Abstract

Many 20th-century children’s drawings saved in archives document both peaceful childhoods and scenes of war. These images convey aspects of these youth’s socialization, identity-finding, and educational processes. They also become repositories of events and contribute to the future of humankind. With the exemplary analysis of a depiction of the sinking of the “Lusitania,” the article tries to make these drawings accessible as historical documents. Methodologically, the question of which images from their surroundings inspired the young people is of particular importance, for example, newspaper reports, contemporary postcards, and toys. In this way, the process of finding an image is reconstructed. The focus is on the question of the visual context, constructed through images available in the living environment of the time.