Heartfelt in a heartless time: 90 years of "Father and Son"

This is the tragic story of the most successful comic strip in Nazi Germany and its creator - a Nazi opponent. It is an anarchic, funny and heartfelt world that began 90 years ago - on December 13, 1934 - with the German comic strip "Der schlechte Hausaufsatz": "Father and Son".

Each time, the chubby, moustachioed father and his young son take center stage, making jokes together and often having to take a bit of a beating in return. The "Father and Son" series immediately charmed millions of readers with its timeless humor, and it still does today. However, not many people know about the tragic life of its author.

Importance comparable to "Max and Moritz"

The characters were created by illustrator Erich Ohser (1903-1944), who worked under the pseudonym e.o.plauen. "Father and Son" ranks right after Wilhelm Busch's "Max and Moritz" in the history of German-language comics, explains museologist Sarah Kühnel, interim director of the Erich Ohser - e.o.plauen Foundation in the illustrator's Saxon hometown of Plauen. An anniversary exhibition can be seen there in the e.o.plauen gallery until the end of March.

"On the one hand, the special magic lies in the humorous and touching depiction of the relationship between father and son," says the expert. Everyone can put themselves in one situation or another - "be it from the perspective of the father as a parent or the son as a child". Ohser has woven his own experiences and memories into his work. What's more, his pictures rarely have text - they are understandable for young and old alike.

The German answer to Mickey Mouse

And so it begins in the first strip: the young son is desperately poring over his homework. His father wants to help and finishes the essay for the toddler. But the next day, the teacher doesn't like the result at all. In the end, the teacher puts the author of the mess over his knee: his father.

Cartoonist Ohser hits a gap in the market with "Father and Son". The "Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung" - the largest magazine in the German Empire - looked enviously at Mickey Mouse's US comics 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 toddler - was just about to hit rock bottom. In the years before, 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, when Ohser observed the rise of the Nazis with great concern. The friend of the writer Erich Kästner destroyed many of his own political drawings himself - for fear of them being discovered.

His application for membership of the Reich Press Chamber was rejected - which, according to Kühnel, was "tantamount to a professional ban" under the Nazi regime. It was only when Ohser adopted the pseudonym e.o.plauen that he was allowed to work again. Years later, he would take up this double life in coded form in a drawing, when the "father" in the comic removes his mighty moustache and places it on his bald head as a mop of hair - and a self-portrait of Ohser emerges.

Ohser's work would also develop ambivalent traits during these years. For the weekly newspaper "Das Reich", which was considered the most serious journalist compared to other Nazi media, he created caricatures of the wartime enemy Russia with strong propagandistic power. Ohser did not like the Nazis, but he also disliked the Soviets. And the commissions bring in good money.

Mascots for the 1936 Olympics

"Father and Son" achieved a level of popularity in the 1930s that is hard to imagine. According to estimates, the anthologies achieve a total circulation of 170,000 copies. The advertising industry quickly turned the two heroes into testimonials, and not just for consumer products. They were mascots for the Olympics in Berlin, for the Nazi winter relief organization and the flimsy Reichstag election in 1936. Wehrmacht pilots even painted the peaceful duo on fighter planes.

Were these two reader favourites Erich Ohser and his son in real life? Museologist Kühnel explains: "In the "Father and Son" comic strips, autobiographically inspired situations are sometimes mixed with invented 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. "He reflects memories from the artist's childhood as well as aspects of his own son Christian." Erich Ohser himself put it this way: "The "Father and Son" drawings are memories of my childhood, triggered by the joy of my own son."

Death in a cell

Ohser's derogatory remarks about the Nazi regime ultimately became his horrific undoing. A captain and his wife denounced him and a fellow writer. Kühnel: "As a result, both were arrested by the Gestapo as "Wehrkraftzersetzer" on March 28, 1944." The Nazi judiciary deliberately and quietly put the country's most popular illustrator on trial. Even before the verdict, Ohser took his own life in a cell in April 1944.

His widow Marigard Bantzer (1905 - 1999) moved to Karlsruhe with her son and built up a new life 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 Plauen's main cemetery." Christian and his wife bequeathed their estate to the foundation in Plauen.

"Father and son" as traffic light figures

In the streets of the Saxon district town, "father and son" traffic light figures are among the reminders of the likeable, immortal comic heroes. However, because there are hardly any research results on unusual signal figures in traffic, the traffic lights only ever receive temporary permits, most recently until 2027.

The chances for the future are good, however: "The current evaluation of the accident history has shown that no accidents (...) have occurred in the last two years," the city of Plauen recently stated in a press release. The world of "father and son" seems to be spreading something good.