Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Giesen, Rolf

Titel

Comic Strips in Germany (West and East)

Ist Teil von

• Animation in Germany, 2024, p.119-127

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

United Kingdom: CRC Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In contrast to France and Belgium, comics did not enjoy a particularly good reputation in Germany. This is one of the reasons why cartoon films lagged behind in this country for so long. German graphic artists and draftsmen who worked for the comics were in bad standing. A typical example was Helmut Nickel, born in 1924 in Quohren near Dresden. As a graphic designer, Nickel was self-taught: I studied art history and ethnology at the Free University [in Berlin] and received a scholarship of 30 marks 30 pfennigs. I gave my landlady 30 marks. So I had only 30 pfennigs to live on. That's why I wanted to make some money. Before I came here, I was a prisoner of war in Belgium and I was put in a coal mine and that was a job I didn't like. The camp commandant had a father-in-law who owned a cinema and he needed someone to draw posters for him. And because he didn't want to spend any money, he asked around among the camp inmates if anyone could draw. At that time, I had a friend who was lying under me in the double bed and saw himself as an opera singer. I made a drawing of Tristan and Isolde for him, which he hung up. During a camp inspection, the commander saw the drawing and asked who made it, and since then I've made cinema posters. Back then, I thought I was born to be an illustrator, and when I returned here and needed to earn some money, I went on to work for an advertising company. A female colleague who also worked for this company had been approached by a comic book publisher. But she was only a signwriter and couldn't draw. So she told them that she knew someone who could draw figures, and that's how I got into it.1 [...] Out in [Berlin] Dahlem there was a small corner publisher who printed his things in the basement. The whole family worked there, on the coloring etc. They took the films themselves and simply wanted to make money. They used different company names that were all camouflage designations for one and the same publisher, because they were always three steps away from bankruptcy. When he went broke, his brother took over, then his father.2