The circular coated iron piece is 56.5 mm in diameter and varies in thickness between 2 and 3 mm depending on the model used in making the cast (Figure 2). It depicts on its obverse the stricken liner sinking, its stern submerged to left while its bow, laden with armaments, rises clear out of the water – an image contradicting eye-witness accounts which stated that the ship went down bow first. The bow is depicted as being ram-shaped, a reference to the configuration of warships of the period and possibly a reminder that the British Admiralty had ordered merchant vessels to attempt to ram German submarines. Smoke billows from the vessel’s four funnels.

The obverse text, ‘DER GROSS-DAMPFER LUSITANIA DURCH EIN DEUTSCHES TAUCHBOOT VERSENKT 5. MAI 1915’, translates to ‘The liner Lusitania sunk by a German submarine 5 May 1915’.

The reverse design shows Death, in the form of a skeleton, behind the ticket office counter of the Cunard Line in New York, issuing tickets to a crush of passengers (Figure 3). Above the window are the words ‘CUNA LINIE’. Arranged vertically and below the counter are the words ‘FAHRKARTEN AUSGABE’ (‘ticket office’). At the extreme left of the crowd a man reads a newspaper bearing the headline ‘U BOOT GEFAHR’ (‘U-boat danger’) and standing next to him is a top-hatted and bearded figure, a representation of the German Ambassador to the USA Count Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff, raising a warning finger. The significance of this reference is that on 1 May 1915, the day Lusitania sailed from New York, a German-sponsored announcement appeared next to the Cunard advertisement in all New York papers reminding passengers that Germany was at war with Britain and her allies and that the war zone included the waters around the British Isles, and that vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, were liable to destruction in British waters. The reverse text along the upper edge, ‘GESCHÄFT ÜBER ALLES’, translates to ‘Business above all’. The initials of the designer, ‘KG’, can be seen in the space along the bottom.

It is probable that the coin, currency and medal dealer Schulman, based in neutral Amsterdam, helped spread awareness of Goetz’s medallion outside Germany. His catalogues contained photographs, and actual specimens were clearly obtained by British Intelligence in time for their use in the propaganda campaign of mid-1916. The exact number of medallions produced by Goetz is not known, but numbers apart it was not so much the satirical tone and imagery of the piece itself as its very existence and especially the chronological error which served to frustrate Goetz’s aims. British Intelligence seized upon the medallion to give a new lease of life to the propaganda impact of the original sinking, and the date mistake made easier their efforts to exploit it for their own purposes. Goetz’s intentions were obscured by claims that the piece was nothing more than a perverse celebration of a singular atrocity.

Some 300,000 British copies of Goetz’s original medallion were made on the instructions of Captain Reginald Hall RN, Director of Naval Intelligence. The logic behind the duplication was straightforward. The date error could be used to imply ‘advance planning’ and that the fate of the Lusitania was sealed before her departure from New York, her sinking being premeditated and pre-arranged – although obviously some unspecified circumstance had prevented its accomplishment on the ordained date. Goetz’s piece was thus placed on a par with a German ‘commemorative’ medallion struck in anticipation of the capture of Paris in September 1914, ‘Einzug D. Deutschen truppen in Paris’ (Art.IWM MED 734) – a work which was hastily suppressed after the Battle of the Marne.

The British were happy to further mislead public opinion about the status of Goetz’s medallion. They blurred the traditional distinction between ‘medal’ as an official award in respect of some act of gallantry or special service and ‘medallion’, regarded as an unofficial work of art produced for sale and profit. They also contrived to represent Goetz’s satirical censure of the British as if it were patriotic German celebration by focussing attention on the caption-like text and its date, rather than on the slogan-like text incorporated in the designs. British propaganda thus originated the myth that Goetz’s ‘Lusitania Medallion’ was an official commemorative of the sinking and in the process implied national approval for the act itself.

The widespread distribution of the British copies, with accompanying propagandist literature, undoubtedly prolonged the effect of the original sinking in influencing neutral opinion against Germany. It helped also to deflect attention from the contentious issue of the British naval blockade of Germany and its allies, the interception and searching of neutral vessels on the high seas, as well as from other British actions that were harming her standing in neutral (and especially American) eyes – the brutal suppression of the Dublin ‘Easter Rising’ in 1916 and the summary execution of its leaders being a case in point. Although Goetz in a subsequent satirical medallion endeavoured to undo some of the damage by ridiculing British propaganda efforts, the success of Captain Hall’s project was difficult to deny. In January 1917 the Bavarian War Office ordered that the manufacture of the original medallion be forbidden and that all available pieces should be confiscated.