Where “Mickey Mouse” and avant-garde comics meet Goethe and Lessing

The Berlin State Library is one of the largest libraries in Germany and is considered one of the most important book collections in the world. Now their inventory has been expanded to include more than 4,000 selected comics and original drawings by comic artists from the past 70 years.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is now the new home of the comic collection of Stefan Neuhaus, the chairman of the German Comic Association, who died in 2022. The State Library and the Comic Association announced this a few days ago.

“Since the 1950s, Stefan Neuhaus has systematically built up a comic collection that impressively documents the spectrum of comic culture and the development of the literary and art genre up to the present day,” explained the State Library on Instagram. “We are very pleased to be able to manage this in the Stabi from now on.”

This was made possible by the donation of Stefan Neuhaus’ collection by his wife, Heidemarie Küttner-Neuhaus. The contract was signed in the State Library in mid-October.

Stefan Neuhaus, who died in July 2022 at the age of 74, had worked in various capacities over the past decades for the recognition of comics as an art form in Germany. Among other things, as chairman of the Association for Art Education (BDK Berlin), he held several events on the topic.

Comics from the USA and France, Japan and South Africa

In 2014, together with like-minded people, he founded the German Comic Association, which, among other things, contributed to the introduction of the Senate’s comic scholarship in Berlin and regularly organizes presentations on the diversity of the German comic scene at international events. Here you can find the Tagesspiegel obituary for Stefan Neuhaus from July 2022.

According to the State Library, Stefan Neuhaus’s collection contains around 4,400 books and notebooks from the years 1951 to 2022. Around half come from the USA, France and Belgium, where comics are particularly valued as an art form.

Another 1,000 titles come from Germany, around 700 works come from Japan, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea. There are also smaller stocks from countries such as Israel, Iceland, Scandinavia and South Africa.

The collection also contains research literature as well as original drawings and prints. In addition to the first comics published in Germany with characters such as Donald Duck, Batman and Superman, the collection is primarily characterized by artistically and thematically sophisticated works for adult readers, explains the State Library.

Well-known artists such as Carl Barks, Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Jacques Loustal and Enki Bilal should be highlighted, and there are also signed works by them.

In the future, the works from Stefan Neuhaus’ collection will not only be available upon request from interested readers of the State Library. An exhibition is also planned for next year. “After the collection has been handed over and viewed, an official presentation event is being planned for autumn 2025,” said the German comic association with.

The State Library’s holdings include around 32 million works, including numerous handwritten notes by writers such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Heinrich von Kleist.