Rolf Kauka

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Paul Rudolf "Rolf" Kauka (born April 9, 1917 in Markranstädt ; † September 13, 2000 in Thomasville , Georgia ) was a German comic producer and publisher . He created the characters Fix and Foxi , among others . Due to his success, Kauka stylized himself “as the German Walt Disney ” and spread that he was also called that.

Life

Cauca's father, Alexander Paul Kauka, was a blacksmith and wagon builder, but was seriously wounded in the First World War . a. worked as warehouse worker and gatekeeper. Rolf Kauka himself first attended primary and secondary schools in Markranstädt and Leipzig. He left this prematurely and completed an apprenticeship as a drugstore assistant, again in Markranstädt, where he stayed for two years after completing his apprenticeship before resigning of his own accord.

No further information is available about the whereabouts of the Caucasus from March 1936, but some cartoons are known for the Leipziger Neuesten Nachrichten and the Weißenfelser Tageblatt , published in 1937 and signed with Rudo Kauka . Rolf Kaucasus later self-reported that he attended grammar school and studied business administration for four semesters, is probably not applicable. He also liked to refer to Finnish ancestors, but this has not been proven. Instead, there is evidence that his paternal ancestors moved in the 19th century. from Silesia to Saxony, while his mother came from Upper Hesse.

In 1938 he did the Reich Labor Service and was then called up for military service at the end of November 1938. When the Second World War broke out , he was still in the Wehrmacht and applied there as a career officer. In this application, he gave the job title press draftsman. During the war he took part in the western campaign and was deployed on the eastern front, before leaving as a multiple-decorated lieutenant in an anti-aircraft regiment a few weeks before the final surrender to his family in Prien am Chiemsee.

Kauka was married a total of four times. In June 1943, for example, he married the would-be doctor Erika Bahre. From this marriage three daughters emerged, including Marlis “Mascha” Kauka (born Feb. 14, 1945), cookbook author and publisher and today chairwoman of the Amazonica Foundation . He also had two children from his second marriage, including his only son Michael (1962-2006). The last time Rolf Kauka was with Alexandra Kauka , born in late 1975 until his death . Steel, married.

First publishing activities

In 1947 the first publication was published with the note Kauka-Verlag, Prien am Chiemsee: a small-format handbook with the title Guide for Police Officers by a certain Dr. EG Mayer, according to information in the book Städtischer Rechtsrat in the Munich police headquarters. However, this book was to remain the only publication by Kauka Verlag for a few years. At the beginning of 1948, the first volume of a planned series of elements of jurisprudence (short textbooks for study and practice) followed, on the title of which the name Rudolf Kauka was emblazoned like an author's name, although he was only the editor of the series. The actual author is the lawyer Norbert Pohl, whom Kauka got to know and appreciate in Prien. This volume was published by the newly founded Verlag der Zwölf in Munich, where Rolf Kauka found a job, for which he thanked the writer and publisher Harry Schulze-Wilde years later . With this he also founded the "Munich publishing house Harry Schulze-Wilde & Co." in September 1948. He traded as “Dr. Rudolf Kauka “ - he apparently borrowed his doctorate from his newly graduated wife.

The Munich publishing house became the starting point for Kaucasus' publishing activity in the early years. Schulze-Wilde was initially indispensable for the company as the holder of a personal newspaper license from the US control authorities, which was indispensable until 1949 . With the expiry of the license requirement, he left the company in October 1949, which was then continued with the addition of Rudolf Kauka OHG . Legal specialist literature was published, but also two brochures on current political issues. Above all, however, people turned to entertainment in the form of booklets and magazines. As early as autumn 1948, three series appeared roughly at the same time: the small-format ax Kriminal-Magazin , the novel booklet series Der neue Film-Roman , initially in a large magazine format , and the Argus Kriminalroman , whose again small-format booklets were solely dedicated to the crime writer CV Rock . The latter, however, was given back after only a few issues.

Also ax the beginning of 1949 has been replaced by one after four issues new Kriminalmagazin , but the first in the short-lived Heinz Ullstein appeared publisher. The Munich publishing house took over the distribution and from mid-1949 the whole issue, again after the fourth issue. In March 1950, a trade journal was briefly added under the title Technical Novelties and Inventor News , which changed the title three times in the course of the year and was finally passed on after only five issues. This publication remained a foreign body in the publisher's portfolio, which now increasingly devoted itself to popular reading, and around mid-1950 brought the western novel series Bill Rocky onto the market. In the autumn of the same year, Mix followed , a small-format entertainment revue in continuation of the Munich “New Magazine”, and finally at the turn of the year 1950/51 the oversized magazine ER - the magazine for men , a takeover from AWA Verlag and intended for an upscale one Audience. These three titles were published by Kauka Verlag right from the start - just like Kriminalmagazin and Filmroman meanwhile - which was not officially entered in the commercial register until November 1951, initially with Erika Kauka as the owner and shortly after the Munich publishing house became the sole owner of Rolf Caucasus switched.

In any case, the year 1951 marked the first turning point in Rolf Kazier's publishing activities. In the spring, after the 27th issue , the Neue Kriminalmagazin ceased its publication, soon afterwards also Mix with No. 7. This was followed by a return utilization in anthologies of three issues of these series or a copy of the film novel under the title Buntes Magazin. At the end of the year, he changed the publisher again, as did Bill Rocky and the film novel, meanwhile converted to the current booklet size and renamed Delphin Roman . These two series have now been continued by the Rastatt novel and puzzle book publisher Erich Pabel .

In 1952, Kauka first tried it in a completely new publishing field: He produced two scrapbooks including the associated individual images based on Bill Rocky and Flying Jack , another series of western novel booklets from Pabel Verlag. However, Pabel was responsible for producing and distributing the albums under the title The Wild West and Indian Country, while the Kauka Verlag took on the function of a picture exchange service. It was not until the end of the year that Kauka appeared again as an independent publisher, this time with the narrow youth magazine Colombo , which was mainly devoted to stories and reports from around the world, but also contained a first short comic: a pantomime strip with a stick figure named Dagobert . This came from the Munich painter and illustrator Dorul van der Heide , who had already contributed a large part of the pictures to the scrapbooks. Colombo was discontinued in February 1953 with the number 3, but the collaboration with van der Heide only really began now.

Career as a comic book publisher

In the early 1950s, the first US comics began to conquer the West German market. Rolf Kauka recognized the opportunities that this new mass medium offered for Germany . However, according to his own information, he initially wanted to produce cartoons. However, he did not have the necessary technical or personnel requirements. So Kauka began to develop his own comic characters and hired Dorul van der Heide as the only draftsman, who quickly looked for and found an assistant at the Munich Art Academy: Werner Hierl. In May 1953, Cauca's first comic book, Till Eulenspiegel , was published, the characters of which were based on figures from German fairy tales , fables and folk tales . In issue 6, the fox twins Fix and Foxi appeared for the first time in a short story, and they soon became popular with the public. After several issues on the front page from issue 10 pointed to Fix and Foxi, the series was finally renamed Fix and Foxi at the beginning of 1955 from No. 29 . The series, which sold over 300 million issues and had a weekly print run of over 400,000 copies, developed into Germany's greatest comic book success. However, Kauka was initially only the producer of the comics appearing under his name. Erich Pabel again took over the publishing and distribution and thus the actual entrepreneurial risk.

In the further course, Rolf Kauka tried out other products, sometimes with and sometimes without the Rastatt publisher. In the same year, for example, the “Bilder-Post” was published, a weekly comic post that was initially based on US newspaper supplements and initially had primarily adventurous content in newspaper format. Despite the addition of humorous strips, including Fix and Foxi , and the two-fold increase in size while simultaneously reducing the format, the object had to be discontinued at the beginning of 1954. Also in 1954, Kauka and Pabel tried the series “Eulenspiegel's colorful children's world”: picture-book-like booklets with a contour cut, which for that reason attracted attention, but were too sensitive to assert themselves. In 1955/56, with "(Eulenspiegels) Kunterbunt", Caucasus attempted to place a monthly comic magazine on the market without a label. This also failed after 20 issues. In the meantime, however, Fix and Foxi had established themselves and at the end of 1957 they were able to switch from bi-weekly to weekly publication.

To do this, it was imperative to increase comic production significantly. This was made possible because Rolf Kauka had by no means given up his animation ambitions. On the contrary, while looking for suitable personnel and the appropriate technical equipment, he met the Yugoslav comic and cartoon pioneer Walter Neugebauer in 1954 . With him and his studio, Kauka first produced a few short commercials in the mid-1950s (including for the “Isetta” from BMW) before he persuaded Neugebauer and several of his employees to move to Grünwald with the prospect of a full-length “Münchhausen” cartoon to move near Munich, now the seat of the Kauka publishing house and since 1957 of the "Kauka-Film-Produktion". In fact, work on the Münchhausen cartoon began. However, more than a roughly ten-minute rough version was not made. Then it became more important to meet the steadily increasing demand for comics for Fix and Foxi , and so Neugebauer and his team, including Vladimir Magdić , Branco Karabajić , Berislav Fabek and Turido Pauš, saw themselves increasingly involved in comic production. To this end, Neugebauer was finally appointed Art Director around 1960 and, with his professional, economically dynamic fun style, would shape Fix and Foxi well into the 1970s. In addition, with his semi-funnies Tom and Klein-Biberherz and his version of Mischa in space , but also with realities such as his Winnetou adaptation, he contributed other remarkable comics that opened up new avenues for the magazine.

Other individually outstanding Kauka artists - in spite of all efforts to standardize - were in this phase, in addition to those already mentioned, including Kurt Ludwig Schmidt alias ("Becker -") Kasch, the native Banat Swabian Ludwig Fischer, Florian Julino, Helmuth Huth, Heinz Körner , Riccardo Rinaldi , Maria Luisa Uggetti, Vjekoslav Kostanjsek, Mehmet Gülergün, Öktemer Köksal, Kurt Italiaander, Helmut Murek, Giuseppe De Facendis, Massimo Fecchi , Arthur Berckmanns and Charilaos Theodorou. Some of them worked as employees in the studio in Grünwald, but often on a freelance basis.

In May 1960, Fix and Foxi was increased from 24 to 32 consistently four-color pages and had thus achieved the format that was to remain valid for most of the 1960s. At the same time, a new feature was introduced that was an essential trademark of the magazine well into the 1970s: Rolf Kauka now appeared personally in his newspaper by addressing his young audience directly in a kind of foreword or leading article (“Dear friends!”) And recommended himself to him as a well-meaning moderator, advisor or simply entertainer (“Your Rolf”). This column was unique in the children's and youth press of the time - it wasn't just any editor speaking here, but the patriarch himself. It aimed to create a special basis of trust among the child consumers, and even if the texts were not always written by Kauka himself in the following years, they were almost always in his name and mind. At the beginning of the decade the number of copies sold was a good 150,000, but now it quickly rose to an average of over 200,000, with an unknown number of sales in Berlin and Austria, where the respective issue was due to the phase distribution was only offered a few weeks after the main delivery (in Berlin at a special price). Fix and Foxi had become a fixture on the German comic market. Rolf Kauka was by no means satisfied with the status quo. He continued to focus on expansion.

On the one hand, he has been issuing licenses for his comic products abroad since the mid-1950s, where they have appeared over different periods of time ranging from a few months to several years, partly in his own magazines and under a country-specific name, but partly also in existing ones Magazine series came under. On the other hand, he began to use his comic characters as merchandising objects - be it that they advertised third-party products as advertising icons, or even more on their own, but in new areas of business (e.g. books, records, games ) appeared.

In the comic sector itself one tried it first with derivatives like z. B. Fix and Foxi special issues that appeared sporadically from 1959, then later on a regular basis (Easter, Christmas, etc.). In addition, there was the special series Fix and Foxi with records in 1960-62 , which, however, did not contain a record, but only a record and was also published rather irregularly. In 1963 there was an attempt to introduce the album format at the kiosk with a so-called Winnetou - "drawing film book", which probably failed mainly because of the excessive price calculation. In the same year, a first attempt to reach a somewhat older teenage readership with a magazine called Junior failed after the test was issued .

Kauka succeeded in this from 1964 with his new comic magazine Lupo (later Lupo modern , then Tip Top ). The magazine was initially published monthly and was designed by Florian Julino almost single-handedly. However, it quickly became apparent that he would not hold out for long. Since Caucasus then commercial director Norbert Pohl - the friend from the early days of publishing - was able to acquire an extensive package of comic book licenses from the Dargaud and Dupuis publishers from France and Belgium at the same time, it was decided without further ado to make these the basis of the new magazine , for which Peter Wiechmann was also hired as editor. A first page with Schnieff and Schnuff ( Boule & Bill ) by Jean Roba appeared from this fund in the second edition of Lupo and a short story with pit and piccolo ( Spirou and Fantasio ) in episode number 3 at the end of 1964 .

In the spring of 1965 a very special and soon highly controversial first German version of Asterix and Obelix began . The two Gauls became Siggi and Babarras at Kauka , two Germanic peoples, and the story itself (here: "Siggi and the golden sickle") offered a satirical distortion of the political situation in Germany in the 1960s, in which the Romans became American occupiers were reinterpreted. The lack of faithfulness to the work and the accumulation of revisionist political allusions , however, met with considerable opposition from the French authors René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo , who then withdrew the rights from Kauka in a dispute. The criticized extremely national-conservative tone was then retained for a while in the in-house productions, which were expressly announced as the successor series to Siggi and Babarras (namely Fritze Blitz and Dunnerkiel and the early Pichelsteiners ). To the greatest annoyance, however, undisguised (and apparently unreflected) anti-Semitic clichés developed, which also appeared here suddenly and again in the following years.

Despite this extremely unpleasant incident for Kauka, which over the years led to a number of legal disputes, he and his team continued to publish numerous Franco-Belgian comic series from the mid-1960s, often first published in German, such as B. Prinz Edelhart ( Johann and Pfiffikus ) and The Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs) by Peyo , Lucky Luke by Morris and Goscinny, Jo-Jo ( Gaston ) by André Franquin , later also Tintin (Tintin) by Hergé and many more. Criticism of the Kauka versions of these figures today is often based on the procedure practiced by almost all publishers at the time, instead of inventing a "suitable" text more or less freely by the German editors instead of a translation that is as true to the original as possible.

The number of licensed series as well as the volume of in-house production that has meanwhile been achieved enabled Kauka to bring a whole range of other titles and sub-series onto the market, such as the Fix and Foxi Extra paperback series as a counterpart to Walt Disney's Funny paperbacks by Ehapa, this time successful introduction of the album format, albeit initially in booklet form, under the cumbersome title Fix and Foxi Super Tip Top and another series of paperbacks, simply called Kauka Comics , from which a new, more adventure-oriented magazine called Primo Comic emerged after a year . All these additional titles had in common that they were essentially based on the purchased license material, with a more or less prominent contribution.

On the other hand, the situation was completely different with a Kauka novelty, which debuted in June 1967 and was a real pioneering publishing act. With Bussi bear the first pre-school magazine appeared on newsstands in Germany and was initially a pure own creation, graphically by Walter Neugebauer - supported by Gisela Künstner - clearly and attractively designed and edited by Marlis Caucasus and Jolan son for children. The monthly magazine was at first quite a publishing venture and an experiment, but it achieved six-digit sales for the first time in 1970, was on par with Fix and Foxi in this regard in the 1970s and has been consistently ahead since the 1980s. It is the only Kauka object that still appears continuously today, even if the number of editions has fallen sharply in the meantime.

In business terms, Kauka also made some key decisions in the 1960s that were to give him a greater share in the ongoing success of Fix and Foxi and, last but not least, more control over his comic products. At the beginning of the decade he transferred the copyright and title rights to a company Europress in Liechtenstein, which was presumably only Kauka himself. In July 1966, the long-term partnership with Pabel Verlag came to an end, after which Kauka delivered the finished books to Pabel for a fixed fee and a sales commission, who then published them on his own account. From now on, a Gevacur AG in Switzerland acted as the new publisher, about which officially nothing concrete was ever announced, but behind which Kauka and possibly also Pabel stood. The final break with Pabel came in 1968, when Kauka also took over the sales department and transferred it to the Verlagsunion, a company he founded together with Heinrich Bauer Verlag . In the meantime, Kauka had withdrawn privately to Gut Eichenhof near Freising, which he acquired in 1966.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Rolf Kauka was at the zenith of his work as a comic publisher. At his behest, his new editorial director, Peter Wiechmann, ensured a significant expansion of the title portfolio in just a few years (which from 1971-73 even included a magazine for erotic adult comics with Pip International , albeit with a camouflage address in Zurich) sales increased significantly. A report by the Illustrierte Stern in 1972 even called him “Europe's comics king”. Now it became clear what was behind these bustling activities: Rolf Kauka wanted to sell his company. For health reasons, but also because he was more pessimistic about the medium-term development of the comic market, he had been negotiating with various interested parties since 1969.

In 1973 Rolf Kauka sold his publishing house to the British company IPC Magazines Ltd. - allegedly for 19 million DM. and the Dutch publishing group VNU , who founded the IJP (International Juvenile Press) consortium for this purpose. However, he reserved a say and especially the copyrights to his characters. Kauka withdrew from the active publishing business and intended in 1975 to found the Kauka Comic Academy in Munich in order to devote itself to the training and further education of authors and illustrators. Instead, he took over publishing coral with a clear mandate, the kriselndem 50% stake in the opposite end of the same year Axel Springer Zack - to help the magazine back on the jumps. At the beginning of 1976, Kauka confidante Wiechmann took over the Zack editorial team, but the mission developed into a crashing failure within just under six months, and both Kauka and Wiechmann withdrew from the project. In the meantime, even IJP was unsuccessful with its plans on the one hand to exploit the Kauka material internationally - this did not even begin to come about - and on the other hand to establish its own range of comics under the Kauka / Gevacur label on the German market, where titles such as Action Magazin Kobra (among others with Trigan by Don Lawrence) did not get enough approval. At the end of the 1970s, the publishing consortium dissolved, and Kauka used his buyback rights to buy back his old company and soon afterwards - again subject to copyrights - to sell it on to the Bauer publishing group, which Fix and Foxi & Co. owned , for another DM 6 million Subsidiary (since 1970) assigned to Pabel-Moewig, from 1989 VPM. In 1982 Rolf Kauka finally retired to a plantation in Georgia (USA) for health reasons.

Film producer and SF novelist

In the final phase of his time as a comic publisher and afterwards, Rolf Kauka tried again as a film producer. In 1972 the "German social comedy" Temptation in the Summer Wind was made , a feature film by Rolf Thiele with a very prominent cast (including Helmut Käutner , Christiane Hörbiger , Paul Hubschmid ), which was just as little successful as the full-length cartoon Maria d ' Oro and Bello Blue , which was made in Italy in 1973 according to Kaucasus ideas and was even released in cinemas with a Fix and Foxi supporting film.

Kauka also wrote two science fiction novels:

  • 1980: Red Saturday, or The end of the world does not take place , Munich and Vienna (Herbig) ISBN 3-7766-0982-6 (a political fiction)
  • 1988: Lucifer. Novel of a soul migration , Munich (Universitas) ISBN 3-8004-1171-7 (an esoteric philosophizing about the evolution of the human race)

End of the FF comics and Cauca's last activities

In mid-1994, VPM Fix and Foxi switched from weekly to monthly publications and marginalized the already heavily reduced comic section. Obviously, the publisher wanted to overcome the circulation crisis at the time with a strongly expanded editorial section with many pop-cultural elements. Rolf Kauka then withdrew the rights from the publisher and had the comic book discontinued. This also brought the production of Kauka comics to a complete standstill.

With Promedia, Inc. , which emerged from Kauka Verlag in 1982 , Kauka founded a management company for his comics and from then on devoted himself to converting Fix and Foxi into an animated series that was first shown on television in February 2000, first in First and later in KiKA . Together with his fourth wife Alexandra Kauka and Ravensburger AG , he also developed the Fix & Foxi Adventure Land in Ravensburger Spieleland , which opened in the spring of 2000. He headed Kauka Promedia, Inc. himself until the end of 1999 and then handed the management over to Alexandra Kauka.

The reintroduction of a new FF magazine in mid-2000 at Ehapa-Verlag failed both in terms of quality and sales after only three issues. The album series Rolf Kauka Classics (1997–1999) had not fared much better . Rolf Kauka himself, on the other hand, was awarded the First Class Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1998 for his work. On September 13, 2000, Rolf Kauka died at the age of 83 on his plantation in Thomasville in the US state of Georgia.

Development after death Caucasus

In 2003 a large anniversary book was published for the 50th birthday of the comic heroes, followed by a special issue in 2004 (Fix and Foxi and the rocket lightning) . In 2003, Alexandra Kauka, as the successor to Rolf Kauka in the company, entered into a joint venture with Andromeda Central Community Medien GmbH by Michael Semrad from Kerken near Düsseldorf. The operative business was subsequently shifted to Andromeda Central Community Medien GmbH and jointly marketed by Promedia (Alexandra Kauka) and Andromeda Central Community Medien GmbH (Michael Semrad) under the label Kauka Promedia . At the request of Alexandra Kauka, the joint venture Kauka Promedia was renamed Rolf Kauka Comics in June 2008 . This was intended to bring the creator of the Kauka series, Rolf Kauka, more into focus.

In 2005, Alexandra Kauka granted the license for Fix-und-Foxi- Print-Magazine to the Hamburg-based Tigerpress Verlag GmbH under the direction of Jan Wickmann, son of the chief representative at Gruner and Jahr , Rolf Wickmann, Lutz Mathesdorf as chief draftsman (previously among other things bestselling author at Rowohlt and Carlsen ) and Michael Hopp, who was previously editor-in-chief at Wiener , TV total , TV Movie and TV Today . At the same time, the comic production of Kauka Comics was resumed. The new Fix-und-Foxi -Comic magazine appeared from October 25, 2005 on again regularly month after month, until the publishing house Tigerpress announced on June 16, 2009 after 44 issues the discontinuation of the magazine Fix and Foxi due to insufficient circulation and bankruptcy signed up.

During the same period, Tigerpress had also published two Fix and Foxi albums and the Fix & Foxi surprise bag (a remittender exploitation similar to the earlier anthologies), but above all from the end of 2007 to 2009 a Lupo comic booklet about two months with the same name Anti-Heroes from the Fix-und-Foxi-Comics (9 issues), and in 2008 a preschool magazine with the Kauka character Pauli twice . At the beginning of 2010, however, New Ground Publishing took over the magazine license and pursued a two-pronged sales strategy. In addition to the monthly print edition, the new Fix and Foxi magazine was also available digitally through various sales channels. At the same time, comprehensive digitization of archive material should support the new offer. But this concept didn't pay off either, and so the magazine was discontinued at the end of the year.

Apart from that, a Fix-und-Foxi book was published in October 2005 in cooperation with Weltbild Verlag and Bild-Zeitung as part of the Bild-Comic-Bibliothek , and two years later, in October 2007, Kauka launched Promedia in cooperation with Cross Cult Verlag based on the Primo booklet from 1971-74 published a book edition under the name Rolf Kauka's Primo Comics . It started with a complete edition of the SF fantasy saga Andrax by Peter Wiechmann and Jordi Bernet. Later, similarly designed volumes z. Sometimes other publishers also relied on Wiechmann's comic works in collaboration with various Spanish illustrators not only for Kauka (e.g. Capitan Terror ), but also for other publishers (especially Yps magazine ). The strictly limited double volume Primo Premium published in 2019 is nothing more than an extensive cross-section of Wiechmann's life's work as a “comic maker” for Kauka and beyond.

Since mid-2006 magnussoft deutschland GmbH has owned the license rights to Fix & Foxi for computer games and from the beginning of 2007 has brought several games onto the market. In addition are fixed and Foxi on audio cassettes, CDs, DVDs, video, present as merchandising and as a television series in 30 countries.

In June 2007 the Munich comic festival awarded Rolf Kauka the posthumous comic prize PENG! for his life's work. Alexandra Kauka accepted the award on behalf of Rolf Kauka. The award ceremony was framed by an extensive exhibition on the work of Rolf Kauka. The community of Grünwald, which was Rolf Kaucasus residence and publishing house for a long time, opened the new Fix and Foxi day nursery on the grounds of the Grünwald amusement park in his honor .

Rights sale and realignment

In May 2014 it became known that the Austrian media entrepreneur Stefan Piëch - a descendant of the Porsche-Piëch automobile dynasty - as sole director and main shareholder of Your Family Entertainment AG had acquired all brand and merchandising rights from Alexandra Kauka, as well as book and film rights to the Kauka characters take over. On this occasion, the private archive of the Caucasus also became the property of Piëch. As a result, Fix and Foxi became the new anchor figures of YFE's pay-TV children's and family channel, which was then renamed Fix and Foxi (TV) on December 1, 2014 .

Even if the future of Fix and Foxi & Co. is clearly no longer in the comic and print sector, but rather in the broad field of electronic media, Stefan Piëch made another exhibition possible with representative excerpts from Rolf's work Kauka as a comic publisher, who essentially relies on the fund of original drawings in his possession. Compiled by Gottfried Gusenbauer , it was presented to the public for the first time in 2015 in Vienna and has since been expanded a number of times, each with its own focus, for example in 2016/17 at the Museum Wilhelm Busch in Hanover on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Rolf Kauka or currently in the Caricature Museum Krems .

In September 2017, Deutsche Post also issued a special stamp with a Fix and Foxi motif. The official occasion of issue was the day of the postage stamp , but this against the background of Caucasus 100th birthday in the same year.

criticism

The Fuxholzen location, the setting for the Fix and Foxi comics, is said to be “a brazen copy of Duckburg ”, according to the daily newspaper Die Welt . Bernd Dolle-Weinkauf from the Institute for Youth Book Research at the University of Frankfurt commented on the Comic Fix and Foxi that its “world” is “very similar” to that of Duckburg, but that Caucasus comic characters are “much flatter and one-dimensional than the Disney characters” . Professor Knox in Fix and Foxi is said to be based on the Disney role model Daniel Düsentrieb and Lupo, originally a bad wolf, is said to have been based on the Disney character Goofy in his character drawing . But there are also opposing opinions. In the booklet accompanying the Kauka / Fix and Foxi exhibitions in Hanover and Krems it says: “Disney comics are not just Kauka comics and vice versa, you cannot simply match the respective characters according to the motto 'here an uncle, there one Uncle 'for each other. With Kauka, the old fable of wolf and fox is always at the core, the rivalry between raw strength and cunning cunning. And this is narrated consistently with child or youthful characters in the center, while Disney is primarily about the worries and needs of adult drakes. "

literature

  • Peter Wiechmann: Searching for traces - that was the Kauka publishing house . In: The speech bubble no. 176–180, 182–192, 194–198, 203, 210, Norbert Hethke Verlag, Schönau 2000–2007
  • Max Ernst: Rolf Kauka. A comic strip patriarch. In: Grünwalder portraits. 27 (2001) pp. 17-19.
  • Rolf Kauka: Rolf Kazier Fix & Foxi. Volume 11 of the BILD comic library, Augsburg 2005, ISBN 3-89897-256-9
  • Eckart Sackmann: Bonnhalla on the Rhine - "Asterix" as a political joke. In: ders .: Deutsche Comicforschung 2007. Comicplus, Hildesheim 2006, ISBN 3-89474-168-6 , pp. 128-139.
  • Roland Mietz among others: Dossier Rolf Kauka. Reddition No. 56, Edition Alfons, Barmstedt, June 2012
  • Eckart Sackmann, Klaus Spillmann, Klaus Wintrich: Rolf Kauka - The long way to Fix and Foxi. In: Eckart Sackmann (ed.): Deutsche Comicforschung 2014. Comicplus, Hildesheim 2013, ISBN 978-3-89474-245-4 , pp. 104–121.
  • Fix and Foxi - Rolf Caucasus great world success. Book accompanying the exhibition in the Museum Wilhelm Busch, Hanover. Edition Alfons, Barmstedt 2016, ISBN 978-3-946266-05-1 . Revised and expanded new edition under the title Fix and Foxi - The Discovery of Spirou, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs. Book accompanying the “Fix & Foxi XXL” exhibition in the Krems Caricature Museum (Lower Austria). Edition Alfons, Barmstedt 2020, ISBN 978-3-946266-18-1 .
  • Benno Schirrmeister: From Wolfsschanze to Fuxholzen. In: taz , March 3, 2017, online
  • Linda Schmitz u. Christine Vogt (ed.): Fix & Foxi. Rolf Kauka, the German Walt Disney, and his cult foxes. Catalog for the exhibition in the Ludwiggalerie, Oberhausen Castle. Edition Alfons, Barmstedt 2018, ISBN 978-3-946266-13-6 .
  • Eckhard Friedrich (ed.), Fix and Foxi . Pearls of the History of Comics Vol. 8. Bildschriftenverlag Hannover, 2020, ISBN 978-3-947952-09-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Martina Züger: April 9, 1917 - birthday of the comic editor Rolf Kauka. In: WDR-2 broadcast “Stichtag” . April 9, 2017, accessed September 13, 2020 . Martina Züger: April 9, 1917 - birthday of the comic editor Rolf Kauka. (mp3 audio; 13.9 MB; 14:46 minutes) In: WDR-2 broadcast “ZeitZeichen” . April 9, 2017, archived from the original on April 11, 2017 ; accessed on September 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Mourning the comic artist: Father of "Fix and Foxi" dies. In: Spiegel Online . September 25, 2000, accessed September 13, 2020 .
  3. ^ Eckart Sackmann, Klaus Spillmann, Klaus Wintrich: Rolf Kauka - The long way to Fix and Foxi. P. 105 ff.
  4. ^ Eckart Sackmann, Klaus Spillmann, Klaus Wintrich: Rolf Kauka - The long way to Fix and Foxi. P. 107.
  5. ↑ Eckart Sackmann, Klaus Spillmann, Klaus Wintrich: Rolf Kauka - The long way to Fix and Foxi. P. 111 f.
  6. ↑ Hartmut Becker, Andreas C. Knigge: Interview with Rolf Kauka . In: Comixene . No. 31 . Edition Becker & Knigge, Hannover 1980, p. 4 .
  7. ^ Edition lists of the IVW 1961–1994; missing information extrapolated. An evaluation of the numbers s. also on kaukapedia.com
  8. ^ Klaus Wintrich and Eckart Sackmann: Rolf Kauka, the German Disney: Fix and Foxi abroad . In: Eckart Sackmann (Ed.): Deutsche Comicforschung 2013 . Comicplus, Hildesheim 2012, ISBN 978-3-89474-218-8 .
  9. ↑ Martin Budde: Rolf Kauka shows: Brand, marketing and merchandising under the sign of the foxes . In: Fix and Foxi - The Discovery of Spirou, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs . Edition Alfons, Barmstedt 2020, ISBN 978-3-946266-18-1 , p. 100 ff .
  10. ↑ Oliver Stenzel: Comic translations: When Asterix was called Siggi. In: StN.de . November 24, 2015, accessed September 13, 2020 . Benno Schirrmeister: Curatorial failure: From Wolfsschanze to Fuxholzen. In: taz.de . March 3, 2017, accessed September 13, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Ralf Palandt : Antisemitism in Comics: Antisemitism in Kauka Comics. In: comiccongress.de. Archived from the original on March 1, 2005 ; accessed on September 13, 2020 .
  12. ^ Ralf Palandt: right-wing extremism, racism and anti-Semitism in comics . Archive of Youth Cultures, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940213-62-4 , p. 25th ff .
  13. ^ Roland Mietz: Marcinelle in Grünwald: Lupo Modern and FF Super Tip Top 1964-1970 . In: Fix and Foxi - The Discovery of Spirou, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs . Edition Alfons, Barmstedt 2020, ISBN 978-3-946266-18-1 , p. 98 f .
  14. ^ Roland Mietz: Rolf Kauka without the Kauka publishing house. Fix and Foxi & Co. from 1973 onwards . In: Fix and Foxi - The Discovery of Spirou, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs . Edition Alfons, Barmstedt 2020, ISBN 978-3-946266-18-1 , p. 125 .
  15. ↑ Childhood Heroes: Fix and Foxi are back. In: stern.de . October 21, 2005, accessed September 13, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Comic heroes Alexandra: Kauka promises new “Fix and Foxi” magazine. In: Spiegel Online. August 9, 2009, accessed September 13, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Lars von Törne: Ready and done. In: tagesspiegel.de . December 22, 2010, accessed April 12, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Stefan Piech buy "Fix und Foxi". In: DiePresse.com . May 26, 2014, accessed April 11, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Thomas Lindemann: Genre Change: Nobody has to mourn the death of "Fix & Foxi". In: Welt Online . June 19, 2009, accessed September 13, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Martin Budde: Rolf Kauka shows: Brand, marketing and merchandising under the sign of the foxes . In: Fix and Foxi - The Discovery of Spirou, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs . Edition Alfons, Barmstedt 2020, ISBN 978-3-946266-18-1 , p. 110 f .
  21. ↑ DNB 975228048
personal data
SURNAME Kauka, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kauka, Paul Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German comic producer and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Markranstädt near Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 2000
Place of death Thomasville , Georgia , USA