Mouse - The story of a survivor

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Mouse. The story of a survivor (original title: Maus. A Survivor's Tale ) is a comic by Art Spiegelman , who tells the story of his father, an Auschwitz survivor , and his mother in black and white in the style of an underground comic and also records his own reactions. The first book My father pukes story from was published in 1989 in German. The original My Father Bleeds History had gradually appeared in Spiegelman / Mouly's avant-garde comic magazine RAW and in 1986 as a book by Pantheon. The second volume And here began my misfortune ( And Here My Troubles Began ) appeared 1991st

The comic received critical acclaim and is still considered one of the most ambitious and best graphic novels to this day . In 1992 Spiegelman was awarded a Pulitzer Prize , a novelty for a comic book.

Form and action

The central figure in the story is Spiegelman's father Wladek (1906–1982), a Holocaust survivor. In numerous sessions the father tells his son the story of a survivor , as the book is also called in the subtitle; the comic thus addresses both the Holocaust and the painful memory of it. Spiegelman puts the story told by his father on paper, not without also addressing the present situation of the narrating father, who has developed into a solitary, stingy and stubborn old man and, despite his Holocaust experiences, discriminates against black people. The difficult relationship between son and father and the mother's suicide are also taken up as topics.

The story is told as a fable : Jews are portrayed as mice, Germans as cats, Americans as dogs, Poles as pigs (which led to the book being burned in Poland), French as frogs, Swedes as reindeer and British as fish. If a character pretends to belong to a different group, he (symbolically) wears a mask. Through the animal metaphor (and the comic medium) Spiegelman keeps the distance from the horror told:

“I need to show the events and memory of the Holocaust without showing them. I want to show the masking of these events in their representation. "

“I have to show the events and memories of the Holocaust without showing them. I want to show the masking of these events in their representation. "

At the same time, this metaphor also reacts to the animal metaphors of National Socialism, in particular to its film-based propaganda of " Jewish vermin " as well as to the use of the vermin-killer Zyklon B in the gas chambers.

Confiscation

A poster for Maus - The Story of a Survivor produced in 1990 for the Erlangen Comic Salon was confiscated in 1995 for alleged Nazi propaganda ( use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations , Section 86a StGB). The poster showed the same motif as the cover of the comic, on which a large swastika can be seen in the background. This incident was related to proceedings against Alpha Comic Verlag in the same year, in which bookstores were searched nationwide on charges of distributing pornographic and violence-glorifying writings.

expenditure

literature

  • Ole Frahm: The white M. On the genealogy of MAUS (CHWITZ) , in: Fritz Bauer Institute (Hrsg.): Survived and on the way: Jewish displaced persons in post-war Germany . 1997 yearbook on the history and impact of the Holocaust. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1997, pp. 303-340
  • Ole Frahm: Genealogy of the Holocaust. Art Spiegelman's "MOUSE, A Survivor's Tale". Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2006. ISBN 3-7705-4145-6 (also Hamburg, Univ., Diss. Phil. 2001)
  • Ole Frahm: Mice, Mickey and MOUSE. On the aesthetics of Art Spiegelman's depiction of the Holocaust in: Raphael Gross & Erik Riedel (Eds.): Superman and Golem. The comic as a medium of Jewish remembrance Jüdisches Museum, Frankfurt (M) 2008 (catalog for the exhibition Dec. 08 - March 09, without ISBN), bilingual German / English, pp. 42–44
  • James E. Young : After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture . Translation of Ekkehard Knörer . Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002. ISBN 3-930908-70-0 , pp. 22–53 [English edition 2000]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The first chapter The Sheik in RAW , Volume 1, Number 2, Dec. 1980, the sixth chapter Mauschwitz in RAW , Volume 1, Number 7, May 1985
  2. ^ Maus II, p. 131
  3. ↑ James E. Young : The Holocaust as vicarious past: Spiegelman's Maus and the afterimages of history , Critical Inquiry 24, p. 687
  4. ↑ Can the Holocaust be dealt with in comics? Fiona Sara Schmidt, Giessener Zeitung , June 15, 2011.
  5. ↑ Censorship simply takes place. Article on Telepolis by Michael Klarmann, May 23, 2001.
  6. ^ Spiegel: Imminent danger. Issue 16, 1996