The Katzenjammer Kids

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The Katzenjammer Kids is one of the oldest modern comic strips . It first appeared on December 12, 1897 in the American Humorist , a Sunday supplement of the New York Journal . It was invented and drawn by Rudolph Dirks , a German who immigrated to the USA, and is the oldest comic series that is still going on.

Katzenjammer Kids: Single scene from a comic from 1901 by Rudolph Dirks

Origin and production

William Randolph Hearst , the publisher of the New York Journal, requested a similar comic for his paper from the competing publisher, given the success of Richard Outcault's The Yellow Kid . It should be based on Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz . For this he hired the German-born draftsman Rudolph Dirks . Hence the names of the two main characters, twins who rebel against all authorities, Hans and Fritz. Other characters are her mother, Mama , who plays a lot of pranks, The Captain , a shipwrecked sailor who acts as a substitute father, and The Inspector , who is the school supervisor. Most of the characters speak English with a stereotypical German accent . This is shown in the comic by using harder consonants.

When Dirks wanted to take a break after 15 years as a draftsman, there was a dispute with the publisher, who did not want to interrupt the series. The Katzenjammer Kids was therefore continued with the new cartoonist Harold Knerr . Dirks sued against it and was given the right to continue the comic under the new name The Captain and the Kids at the New York Herald by Joseph Pulitzer , so that the series ran for half a century in two rival papers.

The Katzenjammer Kids is currently drawn by Hy Eisman and published by King Features .

The Katzenjammer Kids outside of literature

The comic was performed as a stage play as early as 1903 and was also part of a series of stamps on classic comic series by the US Post.

In 1918 the International Film Service released two short animated series entitled "Policy and pie, Part 1 and 2", which were included in the Library of Congress's "Origins of American Animation, 1900-1921" collection .

Cultural reception

In her main work, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , Gertrude Stein tells how she was able to give Pablo Picasso great pleasure after his separation from Fernande Olivier with a pile of comics, which also strongly influenced him visually.

In the feature film Inglourious Basterds (2009), the English Lt. Archie Hicox of General Fenech asked if he was fluent in German, to which he replied "Like a Katzenjammer kid" ( Wie ein Katzenjammer kid ).

In the feature film Heaven can wait (1943) by Ernst Lubitsch, there is a long scene in which on the Sunday morning breakfast table people talk about the latest episode of Katzenjammer Kids and speculate about how the captain escaped from a barrel in the middle of the desert.

literature

  • Eckhorst, Tim: Rudolph Dirks - Katzenjammer, Kids & Kauderwelsch: Monograph on the life and work of Rudolph Dirks. Schleswig-Holstein, 2012 (original edition). ISBN 978-3-942074-05-6
  • Dirks, Rudolph: The Katzenjammer Kids: early strips in full color. New York, 1974 (Unabridged reprint from 1918). ISBN 0-486-23005-8
  • Dirks, Rudolph; Knerr, Harold H .: Katzenjammer Kids. Darmstadt, 1972. ISBN 3-7874-0021-4 Pp
  • Museum Island Lüttenheid, Brebeck, Benedikt (Ed.): Rudolph Dirks. Two rascals and the invention of modern comics , exhibition catalog, Heide 2018, ISBN 978-3-96234-004-9 .
  • Thunecke, Jörg: Wilhelm Buschs' Max und Moritz 'and Rudolph Dirks'' Katzenjammer Kids': aspects of a cultural exchange. In: Wilhelm knocked on the bush: essays and translations in honor of Dieter Paul Lotze, ed. v. Jörg Thunecke. Nottingham (GB), 1987. Contribution partly German, partly English. ISBN 0-9506476-2-4

Web links

Commons : The Katzenjammer Kids  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jonathan Jones: Comic strips and Cubism in The Guardian , April 13, 2002 (accessed September 27, 2017)