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Peter Wiechmann next to the ink drawing of a comic from the series "Capitan Terror", appeared in the series "Primo". PHOTO: TOBIAS HASE, DPA
He brought Asterix and Lucky Luke to Germany and created numerous comic series that have been reissued in recent years. On January 11, 2020, Peter Wiechmann died at the age of 80, as has now been announced on a platform for comic fans . Jochen Ecke interviewed Wiechmann almost ten years ago for Tagesspiegel about his path to comic, the right relationship between proximity and distance to the medium and the patriarch Rolf Kauka. In the following we will publish this interview again for current reasons.
Peter Wiechmann, born in 1939, made comics when it seemed largely impossible that readers beyond the age of twelve might be interested in the medium. Between 1965 and 1980 he was editor-in-chief and production manager for Rolf Kauka, later later head of his own comic studio. In addition to countless other projects, he produced magazines such as "Fix & Foxi", Fix & Foxi-Extra "," Kauka-Comic "," Pepito "," Bussi-Bär "and later" Primo ", which determined the mainstream German comic to have.
At that time, as he himself says, the picture stories were produced "by crazed existences, taxi drivers or geology students who had broken off their studies". People to whom the idea of being an artist could not have been. And which have shaped the pop culture of a whole generation significantly.
Wiechmann plays a central role in German comic history not only with in-house productions such as "Hombre", "Thomas the Drummer" or "Dietrich von Bern", but also because he is a long-running hit like "Asterix", "Die Schlümpfe" or "Lucky Luke" brought to Germany for the first time. Here is the interview that Jochen Ecke conducted with Wiechmann in 2010.
Comic pioneer: Peter Wiechmann at the Comicsalon Erlangen 2010. PHOTO: LARS VON TÖRNE
Mr. Wiechmann, in contrast to the United States or France, Germany has long had no real comic culture. It only came about through intensive contact with America after the Second World War, for example with the Mickey Mouse series, which started in 1951. You were born in 1939. How did the time immediately after the end of the war influence you artistically? Artistically influenced may be too exaggerated. I was only five years old at the time. We were extremely lucky to be able to flee from Silesia to my mother's home in Eschwege with one of these last trains. Huge luck because with three kilometers later the iron curtain fell. We were on the American side, which means that I grew up with the Americans, so to speak. The first encounters inevitably happened - chewing gum, comics and… (laughs) Turkey unfortunately does not start with a “K” sound. At any rate, I stood on the street that led down from the barracks and spoke my first English sentence. It was called, "Have you wash?" Which should mean, "Do you have laundry for my mother?" The Soldierscould be redirected to our house with their thick duffel bags full of dirty clothes, and my mother washed for the 'Americans'. And their work was rewarded with coffee, cigarettes and so on - which was again the means of payment for everything that was vital. For me, the comics fell off. For me they were high-quality exchange goods, but not a read because the texts were of course closed to me. The pictures didn't tell me anything either; what I remember well is the musty smell of those rubber-printed comics back then and the bad paper.
Do you remember titles? Yes of course. Wonder Woman , or Wanda Womän , as I tried to say at the time. Or, for example, Hopalong Cassidy, Batman, Superman ... It was important for me: the comics had to be in good condition, because that was what I really wanted: books! From this point of view, this system has never really changed: I swapped comics for what I needed to live. As a boy, I was more interested in my cousins' bookcases. They had the collected heroic sagas up and down, then Fenimore Cooper, The Last Mohican , or Stevenson's Treasure Island, But also authors that hardly anyone knew at the time, such as Ambrose Bierce or Bret Harte.
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