Mosaic (magazine)

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The mosaic is currently the oldest and highest-circulation comic German production.

The magazine was founded in East Berlin in 1955 and has been published since then in a format of 16.4 cm wide and 24 cm high. The first issue with the three Digedags as the main heroes was published on December 23, 1955 by Neues Leben . Initially it was published quarterly, since number 7 in June 1957 the issue has been published monthly. With the number 38 in January 1960, the magazine switched to the Junge Welt publishing house . From issue 10 (October 1991) the mosaic was published on an interim basis by the Procom Society for Communication and Marketing in Berlin due to the liquidation of the Junge Welt publishing house. The series has been published by Mosaik Steinchen für Steinchen Verlag since issue 193 (corresponds to the January 1992 issue chronologically due to the number changeover) .

Today's heroes of the stories are the three characters Abrax, Brabax and Califax, collectively also called Abrafaxe . Another issue appears quarterly with the main characters Anna, Bella and Caramella.

The sold circulation is 65,227 copies, a decrease of 9.4 percent since 2016. Around 40,000 copies are sold by subscription . According to Mosaik-Verlag, over half of the readers are older than 30 years.

Digedags

From December 1955 to June 1975, under the direction of Hannes Hegen, 223 booklets were published that set in 23 centuries of human history and whose main heroes were the Digedags. However, it was not clear from the start how the characters should act. Therefore, in addition to magazines with Digedags, there were also magazines with animal main characters in the style of Disney. Since the Digedags were interchangeable as figures and hardly had any specific character traits, they were reduced to the figures Dig and Dag from issue 20. The later search for Digedag did not take place until many years later as part of the Ritter-Runkel series. After 10 years of abstinence, Digedag was firmly integrated into the mosaic again from issue 141. The booklets told the adventures of the Digedags in mostly large, continuous story arcs that stretched over many booklets. The series Ritter Runkel (issues 90 to 151, published from May 1964 to June 1969), which takes place in the Middle Ages, has achieved particular popularity .

In retrospect, Hegen claimed to have created completely apolitical picture stories. However, at least the space series (issues 25 to 44) is steeped in the spirit of the Cold War . The later issues are increasingly a classic adventure comic. The Digedags are always to be found fighting for the good and on the side of the common people.

At the end of 1974, Hegen canceled his contract so that the publisher was looking for other authors. To bridge the gap, booklets from the Ritter-Runkel series that had already appeared in the second half of 1975 were repeated. At this point, Lothar Dräger was already working intensively on a new concept for the mosaic, which was later partially implemented. When designing the main characters, Lona Rietschel was ultimately able to prevail with her designs. The publisher asked the editorial team that the main characters should again be three goblins with similar characteristics to the Digedags.

The mosaic by Hannes Hegen has been translated into various languages ​​and has appeared in the Netherlands , Finland and Hungary , among others . Foreign sales channels and sales prices were included in the imprint on the back of the booklet from issue 121 (December 1966). For the old Federal Republic this was the Helios-Literatur-Vertriebs-GmbH in West Berlin, where initially a price of 0.80 DM and from issue 128 of 0.60 DM is listed. In Austria, Globus-Verlag, which belongs to the Communist Party of Austria, took over the distribution of the 5  ÖS expensive books, and in Finland there was a sale through the company Kansankulttuuri Oy at a price of 0.80  FmK . Finally there was a price quotation for the Netherlands and Belgium in issue 176 with 0.70 guilders or Bfr 10  ; The sales partner here was Uitgeverij Het Palet.

Abrafaxe

The successors of the Digedags, which have appeared in the mosaic since January 1976, are also three originally goblin-like figures who travel in an adventurous way through the times and regions of the world. They were called Abrafaxe based on the Digedags and they were given a similar naming scheme. However, their characters are much more differentiated than their predecessors. While Dig, Dag and Digedag were largely interchangeable with one another and had hardly any specific characteristics, Abrax, Brabax and Califax are completely independent and very different characters with different skills, preferences and properties. As a result, Hegen initiated several copyright proceedings against the use of the title " Mosaic " for the stories of the Abrafaxe, but was unable to enforce himself in his sense in court, neither during GDR times nor after reunification.

The three heroes Abrax, Brabax and Califax are still very popular today. A total of 500 regular issues and various spin-offs were published by Abrafaxen by July 2017 . In August 1994 they had already overtaken their predecessors, the Digedags , with issue 224 . Well over 200 million issues of both series have been sold to date.

In February 2018 it became known that the mosaic is the best-selling comic book in Germany and has even overtaken Mickey Mouse magazine .

Anna, Bella, Caramella

In August 2008, a mosaic with the three main female characters Anna, Bella and Caramella appeared for the first time as an offshoot of the actual mosaic series . The first appearance of the characters was on the back of issue 392 and continued in the following issue. Not only in appearance and character do they seem to be the feminine counterpart to the Abrafaxes, they are also connected to the Abrafaxes in an as yet unexplained way.

MosaPedia

There is also an online reference work for the magazine Mosaik in the form of a wiki : MosaPedia .

literature

  • Thomas Kramer : Micky, Marx and Manitu Contemporary and cultural history as reflected in a GDR comic 1955–1990; “Mosaic” as a focus of media experiences in NS and in the GDR . Weidler, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89693-195-4 (Dissertation University of Leipzig 1989, 405 pages).
  • Michael F. Scholz : Mosaic. The first years. In: Eckart Sackmann (Ed.): Deutsche Comicforschung 2006. Comicplus, Hildesheim 2005, ISBN 3-89474-155-4 , pp. 102–111.
  • Matthias Friske : The story of the "MOSAIC by Hannes Hegen". A comic legend in the GDR. Lukas , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-034-4 .
  • Mark Lehmstedt: The secret history of the Digedags. The publication and censorship history of the mosaic by Hannes Hegen (1955–1975). Lehmstedt , Leipzig 2010, ISBN 978-3-937146-99-7 .
  • Reiner Grünberg; Michael Hebestreit: MOSAIK-Handbuch. The world of Digedags. Lehmstedt, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-942473-22-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Spiller: Catalog of the GDR entertainment literature . Self-published by Dieter Spiller, Cottbus 2012.
  2. ↑ For the mosaic in the Neues Leben publishing house and the later change in publishing to Junge Welt, see the entry in Mosapedia [1] , accessed on December 5, 2011
  3. ↑ according to IVW ( details on ivw.eu )
  4. ↑ http://www.ivw.eu/aw/print/qa/titel/2568
  5. ↑ The Abrafaxe overtake Micky Maus - Süddeutsche.de archive version (wayback-machine). April 3, 2018, accessed January 12, 2020 .

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