90 years of “Father and Son”

This is the tragic story of the most successful comic in Nazi Germany and its inventor – a Nazi opponent. It is an anarchic, funny and warm world that began 90 years ago – on December 13, 1934 – with the German comic strip “The Bad Home Essay”: “Father and Son”.

Every time, the chubby, mustachioed father and his little son are the center of attention, doing faxes together and often having to take a beating for it. The “Father and Son” series immediately charmed millions of readers with its timeless humor, and it still does that today. But not very many people know about the tragic life of its author.

Meaning comparable to “Max and Moritz”.

The figures were created by the illustrator Erich Ohser (1903-1944), who worked under the pseudonym eoplauen. “Father and Son” should be ranked in the history of German-language comics right after Wilhelm Busch’s “Max and Moritz,” explains museologist Sarah Kühnel, interim director of the Erich Ohser – eoplauen Foundation in the illustrator’s hometown of Plauen, Saxony. An anniversary show can be seen there in the Eoplauen Gallery until the end of March.

“The special magic lies in the humorous and touching portrayal of the relationship between father and son,” says the expert. Every person can put themselves in one situation or another – “be it from the perspective of the father as the parent or the son as the child”. Ohser himself incorporated his own experiences and memories. In addition, his pictures rarely have text – they are understandable for young and old.

The German answer to Mickey Mouse

And this is how it starts in the first strip: the little son sits desperately over his homework. His father wants to help and finishes the essay for the little boy. But the next day the result wasn’t well received by the teacher. In the end, the timpanist finally puts the author of the mumbling over his knee: the father.

With “Father and Son,” illustrator Ohser hits a gap in the market. The “Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung” – the largest magazine in the German Reich – looks enviously at the US comics by Mickey Mouse and would also like to have such an entertainment format.

When Ohser proposed his characters there in 1934, he – himself the young father of a small child – was left with nothing. In previous years he had caricatured Hitler and Goebbels too often for newspapers close to the SPD.

From professional ban to mass success

This took its toll after 1933. Ohser watched the rise of the Nazis with great concern. The writer’s friend Erich Kästner destroyed many of his own political drawings – out of fear that they would be discovered.

His application for membership in the Reich Press Chamber was rejected – which under the Nazi regime “was tantamount to a professional ban,” said Kühnel. Only when Ohser took on the pseudonym eoplauen was he allowed to work again. Years later he would take up this double life encoded in a drawing, when the “father” in the comic takes off his mighty mustache, puts a shock of hair on his bald head – and a self-portrait of Ohser is created.

Ohser’s work will also develop ambivalent traits in these years. For the weekly newspaper “Das Reich”, which, compared to other Nazi media, was considered to be the most serious from a journalistic point of view, he created caricatures of the war enemy Russia with strong propagandistic power. Ohser doesn’t like the Nazis, but he also dislikes the Soviets. And the orders bring in good money.

Mascot for the 1936 Olympics

“Father and Son” reached a level of popularity in the 1930s that one could hardly imagine. According to estimates, the anthologies achieve a total circulation of 170,000 copies. The advertising industry is quickly turning the two heroes into testimonials, and not just for consumer products. They are mascots for the Olympics in Berlin, for the Nazi winter relief organization and the specious Reichstag election in 1936. Wehrmacht pilots even painted the peaceful duo onto fighter planes.

Were these two reader favorites Erich Ohser and his son in real life? Museologist Kühnel says: “In the “Father and Son” comic strips, some autobiographically inspired situations mix with fictional ones. The figure of the father is inspired both by Erich Ohser’s own father Paul Ohser and by Ohser’s own role as a father. The situation is similar with the son. “It reflects memories from the artist’s childhood as well as aspects of his own son Christian.” Erich Ohser himself said it this way: “The “Father and Son” drawings are memories of my childhood, triggered by the joy of own son.”

Death in the cell

Derogatory statements about the Nazi regime ultimately proved to be Ohser’s terrible downfall. A captain and his wife denounce him and a fellow writer. Kühnel: “Both of them were then arrested by the Gestapo on March 28, 1944 as “wehrkraftzerzerzer”.” The Nazi judiciary carefully and quietly tried the country’s most popular illustrator. Even before the verdict, Ohser committed suicide in his cell in April 1944.

His widow Marigard Bantzer (1905 – 1999) moved to Karlsruhe with her son and built a new existence there, as Kühnel explains. Ohser’s son Christian emigrated to the USA. “Today, both Erich Ohser and his son Christian and his wife rest in the Plauen main cemetery.” Christian and his wife bequeathed the estate to the foundation in Plauen.

“Father and son” as traffic light figures

In the streetscape of the Saxon district town, “Father and Son” traffic light figures are reminiscent of the likeable, immortal comic heroes. Because there are hardly any research results on unusual signal figures in traffic, the traffic light only receives temporary approval, most recently until 2027.

However, the chances for the future are good: “The current evaluation of accidents has shown that no accidents (…) have occurred in the last two years,” said the city of Plauen in a recent statement. The world of “Father and Son” seems to spread some good.