OL (cartoonist)

Cartoon by OL

OL , bourgeois Olaf Schwarzbach (* 1965 in Berlin ), is a German comic artist . He got the pseudonym OL in 1982 because he was too lazy to spell out his first name.

Life

After an apprenticeship as an offset printer , Olaf Schwarzbach worked as a copper printer for the state art trade of the GDR . At sixteen he had first contact with the State Security , which from then on called him trout because of his surname. When the Stasi seized copies of his system-critical comics while searching an apartment exhibition, he burned the original drawings and fled to Munich . Since 1991 he has lived in Berlin again and works as a freelance cartoonist. He describes these and other events in his autobiography Forelle Grau , published in 2015 .

plant

OL almost completely destroyed the work from the GDR era in 1989. Since 1990 he has been drawing cartoons for various newspapers and magazines, including for the Berliner Zeitung , Die Zeit , the Berlin city magazines Zitty and Tip , the satirical magazines Titanic and Kowalski , the weekly Jungle World as well as posters and book illustrations.

Among other things, the Cosmoprolet , an antihero that OL has been drawing for the Berlin city magazine Tip , became known.

His strip Die Mütter vom Kollwitzplatz has been published weekly in the magazine of the Berliner Zeitung since 2005 and was published as a book by Lappan Verlag in 2013 , together with Die Väter vom Helmholtzplatz . The cartoons are satires on the everyday life of gentrification in the former trendy district of Prenzlauer Berg and are cited as a prime example of the fashionable Bionade - Biedermeier .

• Examples
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Books

Autobiography about the youth in the GDR (as Olaf Schwarzbach)

• Trout gray. The story of OL . Berlin-Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8270-1179-4 .
  ( Reading sample on the website of the Berlin-Verlag, reading sample in the Berliner Zeitung )

Books with prefaces by Max Goldt

• Rosebud . Jochen Enterprises , 1993, ISBN 3-9803050-7-4 .
• Fear of eating cheese . Droemer Knaur , 1995, ISBN 3-426-73048-0 .
• From bad for bad . Jochen Enterprises, 1998, ISBN 3-930486-29-6 .
• Butterflies in the stomach . Reprodukt , 1999, ISBN 3-931377-27-X .
• Koenigsberger Klopse . Eulenspiegel-Verlag , 2001, ISBN 3-359-01438-3 .
• Waiter! A man is sitting in front of my soup! Eulenspiegel-Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-359-01477-4 .
• The painterly work - acrylic and watercolors . Edition Galerie Vevais, 2005, ISBN 3-936165-34-3 .
• Where am i staying? Well, here! Lappan Verlag , 2007, ISBN 978-3-8303-3165-0 .

more books

• In the dead end . Jochen Enterprises 1996, ISBN 3-930486-12-1 .
• Chief's own hearth . No. 13 (Illustrations), 2002.
• Drinking helps against aspirin . Lappan Verlag , 2009, ISBN 978-3-8303-3234-3 .
• Cosmoprolet: The man from here . Sailor Blue Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-941155-21-3 .
• The mothers from Kollwitzplatz . Lappan Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8303-3328-9 .
• Cosmoprolet: a man cleans up! Lappan Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8303-3387-6 .
• Do I have tinnitus in my eyes? I only see pipes . Lappan Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8303-3435-4 .
• Once upon a time there was a deer . (Children's book), Lappan Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-8303-1271-0 .

Awards

• 2003: German Caricature Award , “Winged Pencil” in bronze
• 2012: German Caricature Award , “Winged Pencil” in bronze
• 2018 Heinrich Zille Caricature Award

Others

Because of a caricature by OL with the heading The true face of Helmut Markwort , which was published in the magazine Zitty in 1995 and in which the slogan "Facts, facts, facts - and always to the." Was often mentioned in advertising spots by the then Focus editor-in-chief readers think "was parodied complained Helmut Markwort against Zitty to 50,000  DM (about € 36,000) damages. The Berlin Regional Court , the publisher was Zitty sentenced to a payment of $ 15,000 (about € 11,000) for violation of personal rights Mark word. When the magazine Titanic re-published the drawing in 1996 in protest against this condemnation together with explanatory sentences and also in connection with Markwort's past as an actor in sex films, Markwort demanded 60,000 DM (approx. 42,000 €) for pain and suffering, which also increased public interest It came about because now, among others, Spiegel , Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung reprinted the drawing and thus created a public that was actually undesirable by Markwort; also became the model printed in the drawing saying "Fuck, fuck, fuck, and not to the reader thinking" for some time to a household word . Helmut Markwort lost the trial.

Web links

Commons : OL  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about OL in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official website of OL

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barbara Felsmann ,. Annett Gröschner (Ed.): Prenzlauer Berg passage room: a Berlin artist's social history of the 1970s and 1980s in self-reports . 2nd, supplemented edition. Lukas-Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86732-121-1 .
2. ↑ Hans-Hermann Kotte: The “Focus” editor-in-chief is suing the Frankfurt satirical magazine “Titanic” for compensation for pain and suffering: Helmut Markwort and a sentence with many “F” s . In: Berliner Zeitung . October 28, 1996 ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed March 9, 2015]).
3. ↑ Uwe Wolff: Media work for lawyers: A manual for effective law firm PR . Gabler-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-8349-1460-6 , pp. 154 f . ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed March 9, 2015]).