As a teenager, Thomas Theodor Heine earned detention for drawing a caricature of his teacher and was eventually expelled for contributing to a local satirical newspaper. He was soon shipped off to the art academy, where he began illustrating for magazines and by 1900 was hailed as the “most original and most important” poster artist in Germany. In this poster for the newspaper Die Freistatt (the sanctuary), Heine depicts a woman breaking free of chains to seek the embrace of an eagle, a symbol of the German government, in an allegory of the state-sponsored social reform program the publication promoted.