King Ottokar's scepter

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King Ottokar's Scepter ( French original title: Le Scepter d'Ottokar ) is the eighth Tintin album by the Belgian draftsman Hergé . It was first published in black and white between August 8, 1938 and August 10, 1939 in Le Petit Vingtième , the weekly supplement to the Vingtième Siècle . The colored version appeared in 1947.

action

Tim finds the portfolio of a certain Professor Janus on a park bench (in an older German translation, Rauschebart, in the original Halambique). This is a specialist in spelling (seal customer). During a visit, Tim learns that Janus wants to travel to Syldavien soon to examine the seal of the kings of Syldavia. During the visit, Tim also notices that the professor is being spied on. When he begins to investigate, several warnings are sent to him to stay out of the business. Finally they even send him a package bomb, which hits the Schultzes .

Tim then decides to travel to Syldavia as Janus' secretary. When he calls him to tell him of his decision, he suddenly hears calls for help from the phone. When he drops by the professor, however, everything is fine. At the latest when Tim is sitting with him on the plane to Prague , something about the professor seems to have changed: he no longer smokes and suddenly sees razor sharp.

The pilot of the plane that was supposed to take the two of them from Prague to Klow, the capital of Syldavia, tries to kill Tim by dropping him through a trapdoor on the plane. However, Tim survived the attack as he luckily fell into a haystack. Tim realizes that a large-scale plot against Muskar XII, the current King of Syldavia, is underway. Conspirators try to steal his scepter because without it he would have to cede as king according to the laws of the country. Tim talks to the police chief of the place he was driven to and then goes to Klow in a carriage.

On the way, Tim runs into Bianca Castafiore by chance and is able to ride with her car. He escapes another ambush as a result. During the onward journey, however, he falls into the hands of the apparently conspiratorial police officers who arrest him on a pretext. In the meantime the false professor Janus has arrived in Klow and is admitted to the royal archives, which are very close to the king's scepter and crown.

Tim is told that he will be transferred to Klow the next day, where he will be shot. In fact, he is said to never arrive there, but rather to be shot while attempting to escape. He sees through the plan just in time and can actually flee. He eventually reaches Klow and receives an audience with the king. Before that happens, the king's opponents, who, as Tim must now understand, come from the king's closest circle of advisors, try again to eliminate Tim. Although he can still avoid the first attack, he fails again to get to the king, but is arrested by Colonel Boris .

This time he manages to escape because the transporter that was supposed to take Tim to the judge had an accident. When looking for a way to finally see the king personally, chance helps him. In his hurry he overlooks an approaching vehicle and is hit. The king himself gets out of the car. Tim can convince him that his scepter will be stolen at any moment. When the two rush to the treasury, however, they are too late: the scepter has already been stolen.

Tim discovers that the scepter must have been catapulted out of the window and over the nearby stream with a manipulated camera. He barely catches the thieves as they flee with the scepter and is able to pursue them. They are obviously trying to bring the scepter to Syldavia's neighboring country, Bordurien . At the end of the chase, Tim can catch up with the thief just before the border and overwhelm him. In doing so, he finds extremely sensitive papers according to which the Bordurian secret service is planning to use the general confusion that will arise from the forced resignation of the king to annex Syldavia.

Since he is very hungry, Tim steals something to eat at a Bordurian border post on the other side of the border, but is caught and has to flee into the interior of Borduria. He steals a plane at a military airfield and tries to fly back to Klow with it. On the way, since he is now identified by the Syldavians as an enemy, he is shot down and has to jump off with the parachute. Although he now has to walk, he reaches Klow in time for the festivities and can bring the scepter back to the king.

In gratitude for saving the monarchy and the Syldavian state, Tim is awarded the Order of the Golden Pelican. Several conspirators are arrested. The false professor Janus is also exposed, he is a twin brother of the real sphragistics specialist.

In this volume, Bianca Castafiore and Colonel Boris appear for the first time , who reappears as Jorgen in Destination Moon and Steps on the Moon .

Historical context

The content of the volume was politically explosive at the time of the apparition: it tells the story of a failed union . The album was released shortly after Austria was annexed to the German Empire and the Italians invaded Albania .

A Messerschmitt Bf 109 around 1938

Hergé also allows himself further references to the National Socialist background of his history. This is the name of the head of the Bordurian conspirators in the French original Müsstler (in the German translation Rawczik), a trunk word from the two most important actors of the Axis Powers : Mussolini and Hitler . The Bordurian fighter that Tim steals is a Messerschmitt Bf 109 .

It is not entirely clear why the book did not fall victim to German censorship . Perhaps because the Germans did not understand the direct allusion to the German Reich and saw it as one of the many corresponding occurrences in the Balkans. At that time Hitler also supported the monarchy in Romania through Ion Antonescu . A minority of the critics also see Hergé as a proponent of Nazi Germany politics , but the majority strictly reject this.

A picture of a Polish scepter served as a template for Ottokar's scepter. The eagle on his head is therefore an image of the Polish heraldic animal . The uniforms of the two armies are based on those of real armies in the run-up to World War II . All in all, the volume clearly shows Hergé's art of uniting reality and fiction into a connected and credible whole. So he invents a story for his fictional Syldavien that goes back to the Middle Ages. The travel brochure that Tim reads on the plane is impressive and contains a full-page illustration of a battle scene from the "Battle of Zileheroum", which looks very similar to real models from the 15th century with its flat perspective.

The happy ending of the story, in which Tim succeeds in preventing Syldavia's "connection" to the Borduria, is finally overtaken by reality. Austria and large parts of the Sudetenland had long since been annexed by Germany. Shortly after the first version of the volume was completed (August 1939), World War II broke out with Germany's attack on Poland and Hergé was drafted.

For the revision of the work for the color edition, Hergé took an assistant, EP Jacobs , who would later often collaborate on Hergé's work. He "balkanized" many details and generally increased the level of detail. Jacobs appears in some pictures alongside Hergé in a kind of cameo .

The band should actually be called "Tim in Syldavien". Syldavien goes back to an article from 1937 in the British Journal of Psychology under the title "General Foreign Policy". There Richardson explains a hypothetical conflict between a small kingdom "Syldavia" and the annexing power "Borduria".

Albania is not only modeled on the landscape and clothing. The black pelican of the Syldavian flag is modeled after the black eagle from the flag of Albania . Like the Skipetars, Syldavia came under the Ottomans, this becomes clear in the crescent moon of the flag. The motives of the story are clearly influenced by the genre of ruritan romance , which the Briton Anthony Hope founded in 1894 with the novel The Prisoner of Zenda , and which is typically about adventure stories in small European monarchies and the restoration of order in them.

The motto under the coat of arms "Eih bennek, eih blavek", which is translated as "As you me, so I you", is in truth Brussels and means "Here I am and here I stay".

To Numa Sadoul Hergé said borduria have "unique bond to the SS."

Many details are shown very precisely, such as the Parc du Cinquantenaire , Ottokar's royal palace was inspired by the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin and the facades of the Royal Palace in Brussels.

particularities

In 1976 his scepter was found during a restoration in the grave of King Ottokar II in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague , many years after the volume was published.

On p. 61 you can find Edgar Pierre Jacobs (as mentioned above), Hergé, his wife Germaine, brother Paul, Marcel Stobbaerts and Jacques Van Melkebeke in illustrious company .

Web links

Wikiquote: Le Scepter d'Ottokar  - Quotes (French)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tim and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 82
  2. ↑ a b Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tim and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 81
  3. ↑ Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tintin and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 84
  4. ↑ Michael Farr: In the footsteps of Tintin and Struppi . Carlsen Comics, Hamburg 2006, p. 87