Spirou’s transnational travels: historical memory and comics memory in Flix’s Spirou in Berlin

ABSTRACT

While Flix’s Spirou in Berlin can be enjoyed simply for its entertainment value and the novelty of a German-created Spirou story, it is more than just a slapstick spin-off. Flix’s latest Spirou adventure references the intertwined histories of Franco-Belgian and German comics while also reflecting on the mediated memories of divided Germany and the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. Spirou in Berlin thus offers a productive case study for thinking about the many different ways that memory can be conceptualised in comics studies. Referencing not only GDR history, but also comics history, as well as an array of medial representations of the Cold War and divided Berlin, Flix’s comic encourages a medium-specific approach to memory that explores not only how comics act as a medium for the memory of historical events, but as a space to reflect on the memory of the comics medium itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Spirou
• Flix
• German comics
• GDR
• transnationalism
• cultural memory
• comics history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The critical term ‘heritage cinema’ was first employed by scholars such as Higson (1996) to describe a category of British films of the 1980s that displayed conservative and wistful nostalgia for an idealised past. With their high production values and keen attention to the period details of interiors, fashion, technology, and manners, heritage films facilitated the illusion of an unmediated and authentic view of the past on display. Critical debates about the political effects of heritage cinema, its diverse reception, and the potential for viewer agency have been ongoing and the term heritage cinema has since been used to describe particular cinematic approaches to historical content in a variety of geographical and temporal contexts (Higson 2014).

2. As Bart Beaty notes, ‘more than many cartoonists, André Franquin enjoyed playing with meta-referential gags in his stories, and his Spirou work is replete with them’ (2011, 210).

3. In QRN sur Bretzelburg, Dr. Kilikil tries to force information from a starving Fantasio by cooking elaborate, fragrant meals next to his prison cell. At the end of the comic, a reformed Dr. Kilikil has opened a restaurant. In Spirou in Berlin, pictures that adorn the walls of Chez Kilikil feature images from QRN sur Bretzelburg, e.g. the Bretzelburg castle and insignia and Dr. Kilikil himself appears in the background (8).

4. The translation changes the fictional place names Krollstadt and Marquebasta to Berlin O and Bonhalla (thinly veiled allusions to the capital cities of East and West Germany) and downplays references to other geographical locations in the original. For example, in Franquin and Greg’s original, Spirou and amateur radio enthusiast Marcelin Switch travel to Bretzelburg in a train clearly marked as bound for Paris, Basel, Zürich, and Krollstadt; in Kauka’s translation, the sign on the train reads simply ‘Bonhalla-Berlin O.’ Kauka’s Bretzelburg residents speak in Berlin and Saxon dialects, further situating the story in specific locations and obscuring any metaphorical multiplicity.

5. Lucky Luke can be seen through the window of the Dupuis publishing house (6), a figurine in Graf von Rummelsdorf’s home is modelled after the cover of the Tintin album L’étoile mystérieuse (9).

6. Created in 1955 by illustrator and caricaturist Hannes Hegen, Mosaik outlived the GDR and continues into the present. Ritter Runkel appeared alongside the magazine’s main characters, the Digedags, who were later replaced by the Abrafaxe when Hegen left over a dispute with the publisher, taking the rights to the characters with him.

7. Further references to The Lives of Others occur in panels showing Fantasio being questioned by Zantafio (33).

8. Not all the visual citations in Flix’s comic refer to cultural texts from or about the Cold War period. For example, as Spirou and Fantasio wait for the train in the Zoologischer Garten station, Pünktchen and Anton, the eponymous characters from Erich Kästner’s 1931 children’s novel, can be seen in the background (13). Drawn in the style of the original illustrations by Walter Trier, this image more likely evokes memories of Weimar Berlin. There are many other references to children’s literature: the GDR dissident, Momo, is reminiscent of Michael Ende’s 1973 fantasy novel Momo and Momo’s remark to Spirou that sometimes one must choose between what is easy and what is right (32), recalls Dumbledore’s speech to Harry Potter in The Goblet of Fire. These references have no clear connection to GDR memory but rather serve to intensify the nostalgic recycling of popular cultural references that is at play in Flix’s comic.

9. A direct citation of Biermann, whose likeness appears in a tiny image of graffiti, appears later on in the first panel of page 24.

10. While Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ may be the first song to spring to readers’ minds, the pair’s presence in the subway recalls in particular Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger,’ allegedly inspired by his trips on the Berlin S-Bahn trains.

11. Flix quotes Schabowski’s press conference directly: ‘Äh … Das tritt – nach meiner Kenntnis – sofort, unverzüglich … ’ (58). The English translation is mine.

12. An image from a surveillance camera that follows Spirou bears the code ‘03-9-89 0’ and is a possible reference to the day before the first Monday demonstrations in Leipzig. In the shop window beside figures of Ritter Runkel and the GDR children’s TV character Pittiplatsch, one can see the Leipzig Messemänchen, the mascot of the Leipzig Trade Fair. The first Monday demonstration coincided with the trade fair and was filmed by West German journalists. Finger’s comments about the relative scarcity of images of early protests in Leipzig nevertheless holds. See also Betts (2018).

13. Forum participants contributed their observations and information on intertextual references on the following page of comicforum.de: (https://bit.ly/2X1A2T1).

14. Comments regarding Spirou in Berlin and the general Spirou series can be found in the ‘Spirou und Fantasio’ forum on the following page of comicforum.de: https://bit.ly/2WXvQiw. The parenthetical references following quoted user comments refer to the page and comment numbers in the Spirou and Fantasio discussion thread.

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Christina Kraenzle

Christina Kraenzle is Associate Professor of German Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on modern German-language cultural studies, with an emphasis on issues of transnational cultural production, migration, travel, globalization, and memory. In addition to peer-reviewed publications, she is the co-editor (with Maria Mayr) of The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).