The peanuts

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles M. Schulz , author and illustrator of the Peanuts (1956)

The Peanuts ( [[pinəts] pronounced, English for peanuts ) is the title of a successful comic series . The American author and draftsman Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) described the contradictions of human life based on a group of American suburban children in his strips, which had appeared daily for decades. Adults do not appear as acting persons.

In 1947 there were the first publications under the title Li'l Folks (Little People) and initially a Signum Sparky , Schulz's nickname. From October 2, 1950 to February 13, 2000, the series appeared under the title Peanuts (little things; literally: peanuts). On February 12, 2000, one day before the last strip was published in the Sunday newspapers, Charles M. Schulz died. The death of the creator of the series of characters was mourned worldwide. After Schulz's will, the series should be continued no longer, as well as Hergé in Tintin had ordered.

Contrary to this, new stories have been published in comic form since 2012. Vicki Scott developed and sketched these stories, Paige Braddock did the drawings. In 2014, Cross-Cult-Verlag / Toonfish published the first volume of these stories in German (Peanuts - Auf zu den Sternen, Charlie Brown!).

In Germany, the Peanuts were primarily published by the publishers AAR and Krüger. However, the rights have been transferred to other publishers numerous times in so-called partial marketing agreements.

Since 2004 the American publisher Fantagraphics Books has published a complete edition of Peanuts called The Complete Peanuts in 25 volumes (two years per volume in chronological order). The last volume in the edition, 1999 and 2000, was released on May 16, 2016. The German-language version of Peanuts Werkausgabe was published by Carlsen Verlag from August 2006, also with two years per volume . The final volume (1999 and 2000) appeared at the end of 2018.

The German literary critic Denis Scheck even included the Peanuts in his canon of the 100 most important works of world literature. He wrote about them: "The worries and needs of the peanuts are not a cheap substitute, not a model of the human world reduced to a child-friendly scale, but the real world theater of small and large people themselves."

characters

Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown is, in a sense, the main character among the Peanuts. He is the son of a hairdresser and has a little sister named Sally . He is an ardent admirer of the fictional baseball player Joe Shlabotnik . He owns the dog Snoopy , whose madness and eccentricity he tolerates good-naturedly.

Charlie Brown is an eternal loser and unlucky person whose baseball team wins only once with him as manager (this victory is even denied to them; in a comic version, Snoopy holds the decisive ball in his place, and thus Snoopy becomes instead of Charlie celebrated as a winner by the team). In addition, his kites regularly land in the "kite-eating tree" (in one comic, however, he explodes, in another he is completely buried under the kite line and in yet another he even tries to fly kites in winter).

Charlie Brown is the victim of bad pranks on all girls and especially Lucy , who cannot help him as a psychiatrist and instead regularly pulls the football from under his foot. However, Lucy is also the one who gives him psychological advice, although she is largely responsible for his psychological problems. Charlie Brown is hopelessly in love with a little red-haired girl. Because of this, he doesn't notice that both Marcie and Peppermint Patty are in love with him.

Charlie Brown is a serious, unhappy child and thus, according to the illustrator Charles M. Schulz, a reflection of his own childhood.

Snoopy

Snoopy in his role as ace on a patch of the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron of the USAF

Snoopy (English to snoop " sniffing around") is Charlie Brown's house dog who rarely behaves appropriately. Most of the time, the beagle lies on the roof of his kennel, pursuing philosophical thoughts while he waits for the food that "little round-headed boy" (Charlie Brown) brings him. If there is no food, it sometimes happens that a beetle is in its feeding bowl, mistaking it for a stadium. Snoopy cannot talk, and he communicates with thoughts and dances ("This is his' Haha-you-have-to-shovel-and-I-don't-dance", Charlie Brown to Linus) as well as in writing (in comics, among other things Signs expressing exactly what he wants to say). Otherwise he lives in a fantasy world in which he protects the world from the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen as the English " flying ace of the First World War " in a Sopwith Camel , as the "world-famous supermarket cashier" ("Strictly speaking, there is no such thing in the whole world more than a dozen world-famous supermarket cashiers ”) or as the“ world-famous ice dance trainer ”. Snoopy likes to think back to the time when he performed as a figure skater with Sonja Henie . He trains Peppermint Patty for a figure skating competition and is a very strict coach. In the competition itself, he is responsible for the music of all participants and drives the ice resurfacing machine during the break .

Snoopy's adventures with the Red Baron were later incorporated into their songs by the rock group The Royal Guardsmen . Snoopy jogs , plays tennis , ice hockey and is the head of the scout group to Woodstock . He is also the Easter Beagle and the first Beagle on the moon . As his alter ego Joe Cool , he also likes to roller-skate , wear dark sunglasses and consider himself the biggest surfer on the beach.

Snoopy is a lover of art. He even had a real Vincent van Gogh hanging in his dog house, which unfortunately fell victim to a fire at some point along with his pool table . But Snoopy managed to replace it with a picture by the American painter Andrew Wyeth .

He also likes to read. At some point he begins to read War and Peace , but only one word a day. Then he goes back to his kennel and thinks about it. His goal of becoming a writer mostly fails due to the ignorance of the publishers, who constantly reject his work. The first sentence of this work is: "It was a dark and stormy night" - which Snoopy quotes from the novel Paul Clifford by the English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton .

He has seven siblings, including his brothers Spike (the thin one in the desert), Andy (the fluffy, furry one who still lives on the farm where the eight come from), Olaf (the fat one who also lives on the farm) ) and Dab (his missing brother; appears only once in a comic from September 1982). His best friend is Woodstock . His worst enemy is "the cat next door", which remains invisible to the reader and which he sometimes calls "World War II" ( Second World War ).

Woodstock

A little yellow bird, Woodstock is Snoopy's best friend and secretary. Woodstock may machine-write and write shorthand . His thoughts and utterances are only represented by lines that his friend Snoopy decodes for the reader. It's very chaotic , but very lovable despite everything.

Snoopy has to rescue him from his water bowl because of his extremely poor flying skills. That's because his parents built the nest he hatched in on the sleeping Snoopy's stomach . When Snoopy ran out of patience to lie still, he pulled the nest away while Woodstock was taking flight lessons with one of his unnamed siblings. With this, Snoopy forced the birds to fly out into the world with their underdeveloped flight skills.

Woodstock is also part of Snoopy's scout group, which he visits regularly with his friends (Bill, Conrad and Oliver).

The name is based on the location of the famous music festival .

Sally Brown

Charlie Brown's younger sister is born over the course of the series. She is in love with Linus , whom she calls her “bamboo bear” or “Schnuckiputzi” (but he refuses), and is often ashamed of her brother. Sally hates school and keeps trying to stay at home with questionable excuses . Still, she is good at school and would like to be older.

Sally is quite resistant to teaching and tends to take advantage of her brother or to influence her. She also doesn't miss an opportunity to claim his room for herself. This happens above all when he is at summer camp.

In the comics she never addresses Charlie Brown by real name, just calls him big brother .

Lucy van Pelt

Lucy may have a doctor's booth where she gives her friends - and herself - psychological advice for 5 cents, but she also enjoys suppressing Charlie Brown and Linus ; she does not shy away from physical violence. For example, she makes fun of teaching her little brother complete nonsense. In the American original, she once accuses him of being stupid because he doesn't know why the farmers bring the cows in from the pasture at night. She explains to him that they are doing this because otherwise the cows will be pasteurized . Linus replies that he never realized that. ("I never realized that.")

She is in love with Schroeder , and she often sits at his piano . Unfortunately for her, the boy is not interested in her, and so she always makes him desperate with her hints.

She's also a miserable baseball player. In this capacity, however, she respects Charlie Brown as a coach. She is also very worried about him in Charlie Brown's serious illness (1979).

Linus van Pelt

Lucy's little brother is Charlie Brown's second best friend after Snoopy and the most mature personality of the Peanuts . Often the two hold philosophical conversations. Linus wrote the following sentence: “Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you are the Charlie Brownste.” To the annoyance of his grandmother and especially his sister Lucy, he is still dependent on his comforter , which Snoopy is always after in the comics. However, he can also use the blanket as a weapon if necessary, for example to kill annoying flies in flight, which always earns him a lot of respect. That's why hardly anyone dares to make fun of him. He is also very good at building sandcastles, which Lucy is always jealous of and destroys. He is in love with his teacher Miss Othmar and every year on Halloween he waits for the arrival of the big pumpkin . His religiosity enables him to prove to his sister that sighing is biblical ( Rom . 8: 22-23  EU ). Despite his sister's oppression, he loves her very much. His career goal is to as a small country doctor with the Porsche to drive across the country and heal the people. Schulz looked Linus when his spiritual alter ego - his Bible recitation becomes a key scene in the film The Peanuts - Merry Christmas and at the words of the angel, "Fear not" lets Linus even protecting him security blanket off.

Rerun van Pelt

The last main character introduced by Schulz was a little brother of Lucy and Linus (he looks very similar to the latter). Many strips show him on his mother's bike, a bad rider whose driving style drains his last nerve, playing basketball , in the sandpit , asking Charlie Brown whether Snoopy wants to play with him, or playing cards with Snoopy. Rerun wants nothing more than to become a basketball player and a dog, but he hasn't got one yet because Lucy and Linus are strictly against it. Re-run means something like "repetition". After his birth, Lucy says, “Another little brother! All you get in life are re-runs! "

Schroeder

Schroeder admires Ludwig van Beethoven and plays his works persistently on his children's piano , the black keys of which are only painted on. Because of his devoted piano playing, he usually doesn't notice Lucy's advances. When Charlie asked how he could play all those complicated pieces without black keys, he answered completely undeterred: "I practice a lot". He's a good friend of Charlie Brown's and a member of his baseball team.

Charles M. Schulz borrowed the name "Schroeder" from a boy with whom he had worked as a caddy in his youth . Schulz said that somehow Schroeder doesn't need a first name - even since he's not yet the great musician.

Peppermint Patty

Named after the brand name of a candy (her real name Patricia Reichardt is almost never mentioned), it doesn't come straight from the neighborhood of Charlie Brown and his friends. She manages a baseball team he keeps losing to, and she trains him for an athletics competition . In a way, she stands for an independent, modern woman, is athletic (including baseball, ice skating and rugby ) and able to take on everyone. Nevertheless, she always only writes 'Four or Five Minuses' in school and for a long time does not realize that Snoopy is a dog until her friend Marcie points it out to her .
In addition, she is in love with Charlie Brown and calls him by the nickname Chuck , which in German comic strips and films was translated as treasure .

She has a close relationship with her father. Even if it is never directly said, she appears to be a half-orphan . In a comic, she says casually to her best friend Marcie : “I don't have a mother, Marcie.” Marcie usually only calls her “Sir” (= “Sir”). Peppermint Patty has given up on pointing out to Marcie that she is not a "master" ("Don't always call me 'my master'!").

Peppermint Patty always falls asleep at school because she suffers from narcolepsy . She once visited a center for insomnia and , strangely, nothing is found. She tends to be arrogant and complacency when it comes to her few success stories, which mostly come about by chance.

Patty also wears sandals (or flip-flops) in winter, although she then wears a jacket and longer pants. In summer she almost always wears dark blue shorts, a green polo shirt (with pinstripes) and the bathing shoes.

Marcie

Marcie is Peppermint Patty's best friend and a member of her baseball team. Nevertheless, the two compete for Charlie Brown , who is not aware of this situation.

Unlike her friend, Marcie is calm, good at school and without any interest in sports. Marcie isn't shy about calling Peppermint Patty either to remind her of her homework. They met at a summer camp ; since then, Marcie calls Peppermint Patty "Sir". In the comic version, however, Marcie Patty does not call her "Sir", but "Chef", which suits Patty better. In Snoopy's visions of the pilot from the First World War, she is the French waitress in the café who serves him malt beer (in the original root beer).

Franklin

Schulz first drew Franklin in 1968, adding an African-American boy to the group. In the first strip with Franklin , he met Charlie Brown on the beach. His father was stationed in Vietnam at the time of the introduction . When Franklin told Charlie Brown, he said, “My father is a hairdresser. He was also in the war, but I don't know which one ”. Franklin has interests similar to Linus; both are interested in the Old Testament and often quote from it.

More figures

  • Charlotte Braun (a girl who always speaks loudly, who was introduced in 1954 and disappeared again after a few strips)
  • Pig Pen (from English pigpen "pigsty" - an extremely dirty boy who is always surrounded by a cloud of dust and is referred to as a dirt magnet)
  • Snoopy's siblings (in the original American version): Spike, Andy, Belle, Marbles, Molly, Olaf and Rover . (In the German version, some of them have different names, Marbles means, for example, Tupfen ); Above all, Spike had several appearances in which he was denied access to a golf club ("No Spikes ")
  • Violet (snobby girl from the neighborhood, one of the main characters of the early years, friend of Patty, tall and with a ponytail, from the 1960s only a minor character)
  • Patty (appears in the very first comic, friend of Violet, maternal and tidy, blonde and always with a hair bow, from the 1960s only a minor character)
  • Eudora (strange, always perplexed friend of Sally )
  • The Little Red-Haired Girl ( Charlie Brown's unreachable and never-seen crush , except in two TV specials and the 3D movie where she goes by the name Heather )
  • Molly Volley ( Snoopy's tennis partner )
  • Miss Othmar (never to be seen teacher of Linus )
  • 5 (full name: 555 "5" 94572 (postal code of Schulz 'hometown Sebastopol ), a boy from the neighborhood) and his sisters 3 and 4 .
  • Frieda (imagines her naturally curly hair a lot and likes to try to force Snoopy to hunt rabbits )
  • Shermy (Charlie Brown's friend in the early comics, largely without distinctive character traits, disappeared from the late 1950s)
  • Roy (boy with no special characteristics, has black hair and a rectangular cap)
  • World War II (the never-to-be-seen cat next door)
  • Aus-Andy (a tennis player who thinks every stroke he doesn't like is an "Aus")
  • Quengel-Lilly or "Crybaby" Patzer (tennis player who whines all the time and tennis partner of Aus-Andy)
  • Lila (was the owner of Snoopy before Charlie Brown)

scene of action

The series takes place predominantly in a typical American suburb in the north Midwest of the USA. The main characters live in typical, wood-paneled bungalows , which are either on a street or a footpath. Other important locations include the baseball field, where Charlie Brown and his team train, and a suburban school that all Peanuts children attend. Many scenes also take place in a town center, which consists almost exclusively of older brick buildings.

Although the city or region in which the Peanuts live is never described in the series, the climate and geographic conditions shown, the architecture of the local buildings, the international airport at the beginning of the film Gute Reise, Charlie Brown and the stay at the holiday camp speak for themselves The summer was clearly very brief for a location in northern Minnesota , where Schulz himself spent most of his childhood in a similar suburb.

Television films

In addition to the series "The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show", which is based on published strips, a number of independent half-hour stories were filmed:

  • The Peanuts ( A Charlie Brown Christmas , 1965)
  • The Crew Needs You ( Charlie Brown's All-Stars , 1966)
  • The Great Pumpkin ( It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown , 1966)
  • Love Hurts ( You're In Love, Charlie Brown , 1967)
  • Snoopy's Worries ( He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown , 1968)
  • Summer Was Very Short, Charlie Brown ( It Was A Short Summer, Charlie Brown , 1969)
  • I like you very much ( Play It Again, Charlie Brown , 1971)
  • You are chosen, Charlie Brown ( You're (Not) Elected, Charlie Brown , 1972)
  • No time for love ( There's No Time For Love, Charlie Brown , 1973)
  • Thanksgiving Day ( A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving , 1973)
  • Who Stole The Nest ( It's A Mystery, Charlie Brown , 1974)
  • It's the Easter Beagle ( It's The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown , 1974)
  • I Love You ( Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown , 1975)
  • You're A Good Sport ( You're A Good Sport, Charlie Brown , 1975)
  • We have Planting Day ( It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown , 1976)
  • Your First Kiss ( It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown , 1977)
  • Snoopy's Nightmare ( What A Nightmare, Charlie Brown , 1978)
  • You're the greatest ( You're The Greatest, Charlie Brown , 1979)
  • She's A Good Skate ( She's A Good Skate, Charlie Brown , 1980)
  • Life is a Circus, Charlie Brown ( Life Is A Circus, Charlie Brown , 1980)
  • All monkey business ( It's Magic, Charlie Brown , 1981)
  • Just Patience ( Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown , 1981)
  • Farewell to Friends ( Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown?, 1983)
  • What did we learn, Charlie Brown? ( What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?, 1983)
  • The Disco Beagle ( It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown?, 1984)
  • Marry time, Snoopy! ( Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown , 1985)
  • Happy New Years, Charlie Brown! ( Happy New Year, Charlie Brown ! , 1986)
  • Little Janice's Great Fight ( Why, Charlie Brown, Why?, 1990)
  • Snoopy's family reunion ( Snoopy's Reunion , 1991)
  • This will be your first win, Charlie Brown ( It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown , 1992)
  • Every year again, Charlie Brown ( It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown , 1992)
  • Do you dream of the endgame, Charlie Brown? ( You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown , 1993)
  • It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown , 1997
  • Good Grief, Charlie Brown: A Tribute to Charles Schulz , 2000
  • Here's to You, Charlie Brown: 50 Great Years , 2000
  • It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown , 2000
  • The Making of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" , 2001
  • A Charlie Brown Valentine , 2002
  • Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales , 2002
  • I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown , 2003
  • Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown , 2003
  • He's a Bully, Charlie Brown , 2006
  • Happiness is a warm blanket, Charlie Brown ( Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown , 2011)

Miniseries

cinemamovies

The first film in which Charlie Brown won a regional spelling competition and went to New York for the national final was made in 1969.

  • Charlie Brown and Friends ( A Boy Named Charlie Brown , 1969)
  • Snoopy ( Snoopy, Come Home , 1972)
  • Run for your life, Charlie Brown! ( Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown , 1977)
  • Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown ( Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Do not Come Back!) , 1980)
  • The Peanuts , first computer-animated feature film (2015)

music

  • The famous film music for numerous (but not all) TV episodes was composed by the American jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi and recorded with his trio.
  • For the 40th "birthday" of Charlie Brown and the 25th anniversary of the TV specials, the album Happy Anniversary Charlie Brown was released in 1989 , on which many of the pieces by jazz & blues greats such as BB King , Joe Williams , Kenny G , Dave Brubeck or Chick Corea have been reinterpreted.
  • The emo rock band The Van Pelt named themselves after Lucy and Linus van Pelt.
  • The rock 'n' roll song "Charlie Brown" by the American rhythm and blues band The Coasters from 1958 has no connection with the Peanuts. The comic series and its main character Charlie Brown were still relatively unknown at the time, 10 years after its creation.

Trivia

  • As part of the aid program Contribute Aviation Without Borders was an August 27, 2010 Boeing 767 of the airline Condor in the name of Charlie Brown baptized. It has a special paint with images of various Peanuts figures. Godmother was Nia Künzer .
  • In an episode of the King of Queens series , Arthur Spooner claims that Charlie Brown was created in his own image and that Snoopy was abstracted from his own name Spooner.
  • In the Apollo 10 mission, the nicknames Charlie Brown were used for the command module and Snoopy for the lunar module .
  • The 1965 TV movie Merry Christmas was partly blamed for ending the aluminum hype in America due to a scene between Lucy and her friends Linus and Charlie Brown.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : The Peanuts and Charles M. Schulz  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files
Wikiquote: Peanuts  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peanuts 1 - Off to the Stars, Charlie Brown! - Cross Cult. In: cross-cult.de. Retrieved January 19, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Timur Vermes: When did Snoopy get so good? In: spiegel.de. Retrieved December 15, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Denis Scheck: Schecks Canon: The 100 most important works of world literature. Piper , Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3492059343 , pages 195–198.
  4. ^ Charles M. Schulz: Snoopy is the best . 1st edition. Carlsen Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-551-35953-7 .
  5. ^ Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Paul Clifford - Chapter 3 in the Gutenberg-DE project
  6. ^ Charles M. Schulz: Conversations. Edited by M. Thomas Inge, p. 74.
  7. ↑ M. Thomas Inge (Ed.): Charles M. Schulz: Conversations , University Press of Mississippi 2000
  8. ↑ http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1953/04/09#.Um1KZRAv2Uk
  9. ↑ Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown on IMDb.de
  10. ↑ Press release Condor ( Memento from December 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ What does Charlie Brown have to do with aluminum Christmas trees? A review ... , accessed on December 27, 2019 in Guardi.at.
  12. ↑ Heilig's Blechle In: Spiegel Geschichte. December 17, 2010, accessed February 2, 2020