Lecturer
Lektro is a character invented by the draftsman and painter Reiner Zimnik , which was extremely popular in Germany in the 1950s and 60s . The modern fairy-tale figure , which was marketed through multimedia, can be described as a "strange, enigmatic man in glasses".
origin
In the 50s Lektro was initially only a minor character in the literary fairytale The crane (1956) of the young artist Reiner Zimnik, through a television broadcast of the crane as a character story became known, a preform of animation, the first time to a wider audience. The program was the product of an extensive collaboration between Zimnik, who was still an art student at the time, and friends in Munich : the then news anchor Joachim Fuchsberger and the brothers Kurt Wilhelm and Rolf Alexander Wilhelm , who were also at the beginning of their careers in radio and film .
The reason for the creative cooperation was, at least as the cover text of a later Lektro record wants to know, that it was decided to "put something (...) into the world together" - "cheerful", "satirical" and "not without poetry" because you can't just drink beer in Munich.
description
Appearance
Zimnik designed the figure Lektro as a little man with a service cap, nickel glasses and service suit, depicted with an extremely reduced number of lines, in stylized simplicity.
Other specifications
The figure is profoundly odd. Lektro describes the preface to a collective edition by Droemersche Verlagsanstalt as
- a typical product of (his) time: At home in all political systems, he constantly gets entangled in the webs of the modern social order .
Lectro stories address human problems in an increasingly technological and institutionalized world. Lektro offends, fights "with simple-minded persistence" for "a last bit of a life of its own". His constant failure is only apparently tragic, since Lektro is still able to see and respect the little happiness in everyday life.
Lecturer in ...
...Watch TV
First Lektro appears as a friend of the crane operator and "the best electric vehicle driver far and wide" in Der Kran , the second drawing story program by Zimnik and his friends.
Due to a positive audience response to the figure of Lektro, further stories were developed, now with Lektro as the title hero: Lektro was allowed to become dissatisfied with his job and to work in a wide variety of other professions, from street sweeper to composer, but always maintaining the electric vehicle driver's service cap and uniform . This gradually resulted in a whole series of episodes about the Kauz Lektro.
Lektro becomes an extremely popular program on German television, has an audience of millions and receives audience mail from both children and adults. But even the critics' surveys carried out annually in the 1950s and 1960s see Lektro's programs again and again at the top.
...Book
After the television broadcast, Der Kran became extremely successful as a book and, in the years that followed, was translated into other languages and internationally known.
The first volume with Lektro stories is, however, only stories from Lektro (1962), which collects the illustrated television drawing stories based on The Crane . With new stories from Lektro a second band appears 1964th
Lektro and the Fire Brigade (1964) and Lektro and the Ice King (1965) appear as independent publications of individual stories .
This was followed by numerous reprints, the last in Germany in 1990; the last new publication of all Lektro stories appeared with Lektro (2000) and Altri by pensieri di Lektro (2000) in Italian .
... audio book
A record that in February 1973 after a long time brought together the four friends and "parents" Lektros Zimnik, Fuchsberger, Kurt and Rolf Wilhelm, whose careers had developed differently after their early success with the drawing stories. a. for the establishment of the story of a 350th anniversary celebration and a small melody that was lost as a record version under the title Lektro: The disappeared melody was created in the Polydor Studio in Munich: Fuchsberger took over the role of speaker again, Rolf Wilhelm wrote the music, Kurt Wilhelm directed and Zimnik drew the story again for the record cover.
This recording is now available again as an audio book under the title Jonas der Angler (2000) .
Web links
- spiegel.de: LEKTRO-SCHOCK from January 4, 1961