Handcut metal wall decoration of a Jewish beggar fending off a dog

The Katz Ehrenthal Collection is a collection of more than 900 objects depicting Jews and antisemitic and anti-Jewish propaganda from the medieval to the modern era, in Europe, Russia, and the United States. The collection was amassed by Peter Ehrenthal, a Romanian Holocaust survivor, to document the pervasive history of anti-Jewish hatred in Western art, politics and popular culture. It includes crude folk art as well as pieces created by Europe's finest craftsmen, prints and periodical illustrations, posters, paintings, decorative art, and toys and everyday household items decorated with depictions of stereotypical Jewish figures. 

The wall decoration sign was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016 by the Katz Family. 

Handcut metal wall decoration of a Jewish beggar fending off a dog 

overall: Height: 11.000 inches (27.94 cm) | Width: 15.750 inches (40.005 cm) 

Painted cutout sheet metal hanging wall decoration of a caricatured Jewish beggar fending off a dog with his umbrella. The figures are based on a series of paintings created by J. Gehrts around 1889. The images were reproduced on postcards around the same time, exploiting the stock figure of the Jewish beggar for humorous effect. This wall decoration is one of more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic visual materials. 

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Painted sheet metal wall decoration cut out in the shape of a Jewish man opening a large, broken black umbrella and holding it out to stop a brown dog advancing toward him. The dog crouches in right profile on the left and the man stands on the right in left profile. He wears a shabby, collapsing, dark green top hat and a worn, knee length overcoat with a large, corked bottle sticking out of the left pocket. Both worn black boots are visible. He has a large, bushy eyebrow and hooded eye, a huge, curved nose, and his thick lipped mouth is open as if yelling. He bends forward with flexed knees, bent left elbow jutting out behind as he holds the umbrella handle with that hand and pushes the pointed tip out with his right arm. The dog stares at him, his black nose nearly touching the umbrella tip. Its mouth is open, showing white fangs and red tongue, the ears are back, and the front right paw and tail are raised. The figures stand on a brown rectangle with stepped ends and a painted slang term. Hanging loops are soldered on the dog’s tail and man’s elbow with an attached 20.5 inch link chain. The back is rusted. front, bottom right, handwritten, pencil : JUDEN