First Dortmund Comic Prize for Hannah Brinkmann: Examination of conscience with fatal consequences

The young man seems to be looking directly at you. The eyes in the narrow face framed by long hair are large and serious. His counterpart relentlessly pushes him to answer a question that will decide his future: Would he defend himself in the event of an attack?

The “Taktaktak” of the typewriter fills the room. Thick beads of sweat trickle down the respondent’s forehead. From one panel to the next, his head moves downwards in the frame, as if something in him had lost his balance.

Scenes of a “test of conscience” that tens of thousands of young men in the Federal Republic experienced up until the 1980s. Every conscientious objector had to go through the often harassing survey conducted by ex-soldiers, the outcome of which determined whether they belonged to the minority who were allowed to do community service. The application from Hermann Brinkmann, the uncle of the Hamburg artist Hannah Brinkmann, was rejected in 1973 – with fatal consequences.

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After starting military service, he took his own life

In her comic debut “Against My Conscience,” the 30-year-old approaches her sensitive and principled uncle, whom she never met personally, in clear images that are reminiscent of woodcuts with their static appearance and striking lines: shortly after the start of his military service the convinced pacifist took his own life.

Brinkmann conveys how this came about in factual sequences of images, which are occasionally supplemented by surrealistic sequences. The result is a generational portrait in which many middle-aged and older readers in particular will recognize themselves. And younger people learn something about an important chapter in German history that has rarely been conveyed so clearly.

Four years after its publication by Berlin’s avant-Verlag, “Against My Conscience” has now been honored with a new award: Hannah Brinkmann is receiving the first Dortmund Comic Prize honored. The city administration there announced this this week.

The award is worth 10,000 euros and will be awarded every two years in the future. Mayor Thomas Westphal wants to present the prize at a public event on February 7, 2025.

“Hannah Brinkmann succeeds in an outstanding way in linking the political discourse of the young Federal Republic and the question of whether a state can be entitled to decide on the conscience of its young citizens with the personal fate of her uncle,” it says the jury’s reasons. This is “an achievement that is both masterful and empathetic and therefore extremely worthy of an award.”

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Hannah Brinkmann’s new book, in which she also deals with a political biography, is due to be published by avant in November: “Time doesn’t heal wounds.” A first insight into the project can be found in this article.