GDR comic censorship: Digedags episode published after 62 years

Two manuscripts from the 1963 comic magazine "Mosaik", which were thought to have been lost, have been found in the estate of Hannes Hegen. They had not been published because the GDR publisher Junge Welt took an increasingly critical view of the storyline, according to Mosaik Steinchen für Steinchen Verlag in Berlin. On May 16, Hegen's 100th birthday, one of the two 62-year-old episodes featuring the three goblins Dig, Dag and Digedag will now be published posthumously.

Too much bourgeoisie, too little working class

The "Mosaik" issue entitled "Duel on the Neva" is part of the so-called inventor series. In this series, the bulbous-nosed main characters met various inventors from antiquity to the late 19th century. Most recently, it was about the German submarine inventor Wilhelm Bauer. "The publisher Junge Welt increasingly disliked the fact that the inventors tended to come from the upper middle classes and did not embody the achievements of the working class," said publishing spokesperson Robert Löffler to dpa.

The stories were also described as too humorous. More seriousness and a stronger reference to the achievements of the workers' movement were demanded. "In 1963, massive pressure was exerted on Hannes Hegen, so that he finally felt compelled to change the concept and launch a medieval comic novel in the footsteps of Marco Polo with the Runkel series. This made it possible for him to circumvent the daily political demands of the publishing house management," said Löffler.

The inventor series was then prematurely discontinued in 1964. Completed text manuscripts, exposés and character designs were preserved in Hannes Hegen's archive. He also left behind a huge archive of books that are still useful for researching historical buildings and uniforms, for example.

The two former Mosaic illustrators Ulf S. Graupner and Steffen Jähde have now created the episode "Duel on the Neva" to match the text manuscripts from Hegen's estate. "It was traditionally drawn by hand," explained Löffler. However, the drawings were then digitally assembled and colored. The issue will be published as a May special, in addition to the regular "Mosaik" issue.

The "Mosaik" was first published in East Berlin in December 1955. It was always sold out immediately until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The reason: Hegen's three clever heroes did not spread socialist propaganda, but took the reader around the world and into the most diverse eras - for example to ancient Rome.

Oldest German comic magazine

In a dispute with the FDJ publishing house Junge Welt, Hegen finally left the magazine completely in 1975 and retired to private life. This was the end of the Digedags - after 229 issues. During a visit to a major Digedags exhibition at the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum in Leipzig in 2012, Hegen reported that he still had numerous plans for further adventures in the drawer when he left "Mosaik".

But three new heroes were created for the "Mosaik" - the Abrafaxe. Abrax, Brabax and Califax are still on the road once a month. They will be 50 years old in the December issue. Hegen died at the age of 89 in November 2014, making "Mosaik" the oldest of the currently published German comic magazines.