Colonel Blimp
Colonel Blimp ("Colonel Blimp ") was the title of a British comic strip series that appeared in the British Evening Standard in the 1930s , as well as the name of the main character in that series. Colonel Blimp's creator was New Zealand cartoonist and caricaturist David Low , who was brought to the Standard by Lord Beaverbrook in 1927 . Over time, Low not only had Colonel Blimp appear in his own cartoon series Colonel Blimp , but also occasionally built him into his cartoons of daily political events as an assistant figure with a high recognition value .
The title hero
Low portrayed Colonel Blimp as the cliché of a British conservative and imperialist , emphasizing his irascibility, pomposity and jingoism as the character's individual gifts . General Arthur Aitken is said to have been the model for this fictional character. The figure's bushy, walrus-like mustache, which bore a certain resemblance to famous military beards such as Horatio Kitchener and Douglas Haig , was particularly characteristic in its appearance . There is also a certain similarity to Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin , who at the time largely determined the image of floating aviation in Great Britain and was therefore closely associated with the term blimp .
The term "blimps", which was coined in the series, found its way into British colloquial language and was officered by George Orwell (e.g. in "The Home Guard is [...] an astonishing phenomenon, a sort of People's Army") by Blimps ”- in Partisan Review, April 15, 1941.) and Tom Witringham (“ How to Reform the Army and People's War ”).
Blimp as a film hero 1943
A more likable version of Blimp appeared in the classic film " The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp " produced in 1943 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger . Although the name Colonel Blimp appears in the film title, the character is referred to as Clive Candy throughout the film . Winston Churchill tried in vain to stop the production of the film for reasons that have not yet been fully clarified: he himself and the British army are presented extremely positively, so that no reason can be seen in this regard. The decisive factor in his efforts seems to have made the satirical image of the German army and in particular the appearance of a sympathetic German character, which the film still offered in the war year 1943, questionable in the eyes of some political circles.
Aftermath
The character of Colonel Blimp is mainly used by British cartoonists to this day due to its high recognition value. In doing so, it functions as an archetype into which every reader automatically projects certain characteristics that are traditionally assigned to the character and which she thus symbolizes as an inventory figure in British caricaturism: arch-conservative to reactionary views that should not be assigned to a specific political actor, but rather in Their general social impact should be made clear, are often identified with blimp figures in caricatures. An example of this is the caricature "All Behind You John" from 1991, in which the caricaturist Chris Riddell alludes to the caricature "All Behind You Winston" (which benevolently represented the collection of the British people around the war premier Winston Churchill) the Eurosceptic British reactionaries - in the shape of a crowd from Colonel Blimps - can be formed behind the then Prime Minister John Major.