Manfred Schmidt (comic artist)

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Manfred Schmidt (born April 15, 1913 in Bad Harzburg , † July 28, 1999 in Ambach am Starnberger See ) was a comic book artist and humorous travel writer.

Life

Manfred Schmidt grew up in Bremen . When he was 14 years old, his first comics were published in the Bremer Nachrichten and the Weser-Zeitung . At the same age he played the saxophone and banjo in the jazz band "The Great Eight". In 1931 he put on a new high school , the high school , and decided to become active in the film industry, but this was not very productive. He studied at the Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule Bremen and then worked as a press illustrator for Ullstein Verlag . In 1933 he moved to Berlin to become a film director, but only got one job as a camera apprentice. He was soon known as a cartoonist . At the beginning of the Second World War he drew for the Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH, which is controlled by the Reich Propaganda Ministry. With the employment he tried to escape the conscription to the Wehrmacht , since the film company was of great importance for the Nazi regime. In 1942 he was finally called up for military service and worked as a military cartographer . He was never used at the front, instead he was a member of a propaganda company of the Waffen SS and the Wehrmacht. Towards the end of the war he drew back jokes for the army newspaper tanks advance and for propaganda leaflets, which morale in Europe landed US troops should be undermined.

In the post-war period he was initially employed in the editorial team of the pacifist magazine Pinguin , published by Rowohlt and edited by Erich Kästner . After Schmidt got to know the Superman comics, he decided to make a parody of this narrative form, which he perceived as primitive and dull: Nick Knatterton , a detective story in comic format, was written for the illustrated magazine Quick from 1950 . According to his own statement, the personification of Sherlock Holmes by Hans Albers served as a template for the detective . Another important source of inspiration was the novel hero Nat Pinkerton from the 1920s, whose novels Schmidt had consumed in his youth. However, a first variant appeared as early as 1935 in the newspaper Die Grüne Post under the title The Maud O'Key's Call for Help . A detective named Nick Knatterton has already acted with cunning and skill in crime history. As a result, the humorous man's Superman and Hans Albers explanations are more likely to be classified as humorous transfigurations. Nick Knatterton was very successful and filmed in Schmidt's own cartoon studio. The nationwide success made him wealthy, so he bought a yacht, which he named "Knatterton". The demands of the weekly series production, however, increasingly overwhelmed him, so that he wanted to let Knatterton die or get married in the 1959 stories, but the outcry among the readers prevented this time and time again. The ongoing emotional strain resulted in writer's block, which even a psychiatrist called in could not resolve. Finally, Schmidt gave up his job at Quick as a Knatterton draftsman and began an equally successful career as a travel journalist.

Schmidt was politically on the left; he described himself as "noble communists" and saw the GDR as a counter-model to the Federal Republic. Schmidt also worked as a comic book critic in the 1960s and wrote several books on the subject. He created other comic series and cartoons with ironic undertones for German television . He also wrote radio plays, designed commercials and authored several travel books.

style

Schmidt's comics and travelogues are always humorous and characterized by a cheerful, sometimes ironic naivety.

Quote

  • "If the computer can really do everything, then it can cross me."

Awards

Works

Travel reports

  • Have sun in my suitcase . Stalling, Oldenburg 1961
  • ... and continues on . Stalling, Oldenburg 1962
  • 12 times there and back . Stalling, Oldenburg 1963
  • Between major and garbage . Stalling, Oldenburg 1964
  • More cheerful . Stalling, Oldenburg 1965
  • The wanderlust alarm clock . Stalling, Oldenburg 1967
  • Manfred Schmidt's ABC of Travel . Stalling, Oldenburg 1969
  • All the best from Manfred Schmidt . Stalling, Oldenburg 1970

Compilations

  • With Mrs. Meier in the desert , 1967
  • Mrs. Meier travels on , 1968
  • The best by Manfred Schmidt , 1968
  • Through the world with a sharp pen , 1978
  • The fastest hotel in the world (Most diverse stories), 1983
  • Cheerful Stories , 1984
  • On a cruise with Mrs. Meier , 1991
  • Nick Knatterton: All the Exciting Adventures of the Famous Master Detective , 2007
  • Travel reports , 2013

Exhibitions

  • May 23–16. August 2015: combine! Nick Knatterton & Co. - Drawings by Manfred Schmidt , in the Villa Dessauer in Bamberg

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg Germany: Cult detective Nick Knatterton: Sherlock Holmes with a man's joke .
  2. In conversation: Annette Riedhammer, the daughter of cartoonist Manfred Schmidt, FAZ April 6, 2013, p. 40.
  3. Exhibition information ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the Wilhelm Busch - German Museum for Caricature and Drawing , Hanover. Retrieved March 21, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.karierter-museum.de
  4. Exhibition information ( Memento of the original from October 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of Villa Dessauer , Bamberg. Retrieved August 3, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / museum.bamberg.de