Argentina’s dictatorship – graphic novel “silence”: against the silence

Why is this graphic novel called “silence”? In the first chapter, Birgit Weyhe explains: “This book deals with two women who were affected by silence in different ways, the private individual and cover up the political.”

This tells two stories. On the one hand, as Ellen Marx emigrated to Buenos Aires as a 17-year-old German Jew in the spring of 1939 without parents. Your entire family is killed by the Nazis in the Shoah. Almost 40 years later, in March 1977, “disappearing” her adult daughter Nora. The Argentine military junta fights the left opposition with terror and arbitrary arrests. The violence is reinforced with the deletion and disappearance, relatives and comrades are terrorized by uncertainty. For Ellen Marx, a lifelong search begins, it becomes one of the famous “mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”, which, despite the ban and repression, gather publicly in the central square to ask about their missing children.

The second lifeline in “silence” was born by Elisabeth Käsemann: in 1947 in Gelsenkirchen, she had politicized herself around 1968 during her studies in West Berlin and was a member of the Socialist German Student Association. The 68s called for an end to silence on the crimes of the Nazi era and protested against the Vietnam War. From 1970 Elisabeth Käsemann lived in Buenos Aires and participates in the self -organization in the city’s self -organization, as well as Nora Marx. In a long conversation in the graphic novel, Nora explains to her mother Ellen what it is about: organizing practical self -help and solidarity, but also about agitation for a fairer social order.

Birgit Weyhe quotes posters, advertisements, historically known photos and varies iconic symbols. Your drawings shaped by clear lines correspond to the finely snowed font.

Like Nora Marx, Elisabeth Käsemann was arrested in March 1977. In “silence” you can see how her British girlfriend Diana is in vain for her. Then she is also arrested, dragged into the El Vesubio torture camp and tortured. But Diana survives because the British embassy is decisive for her release. However, the Federal Foreign Office that Elisabeth’s parents ask for help is silent. Diana later reports how she had to hear her friend Elisabeth’s scream in a neighboring cell and how it smelled of burned meat when the prisoners were tortured with electricity.

Weyhe quotes from a “country report” of the Federal Foreign Office from 1977: “The actual problems of Argentina are in the domestic policy area, in the fight against subversion and political extremism. Combating has a priority. Great progress has been made since the beginning of the military government. «The economic interests and the upcoming World Cup in 1978 should be priority.

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Carefully researched background information supports the plot. However, the clear drawings are not overlaid by the text. By restriction to a reduced color palette- black, two green and red tones, yellow- they appear clearly contoured. It’s not about spectacle, it’s about life. And death. In the chapter in which Elisabeth Käsemann’s murder is described, the pages are black instead of white. On top of it with fragile lines in white: objects from prison. And as the text of the sober report by the Elisabeth-Käsemann Foundation on the execution of a group of prisoners on May 24, 1977, including Elisabeth Käsemann.

There are also pages on other chapters on which the representation of concrete violence passes into abstraction. Or pages that are almost black. “I broke several drawing springs and brushes for the scribbled areas because I actually worked on the drawing tools with incredible pressure and violence,” explains Weyhe. “The drawn people meet violent abstraction of violence.”

“Silence” is the most extensive of Weyhes so far eleven comic books. She worked on him for four years. It is an indictment against the politics of silence and an important contribution to the culture of remembrance, in the form and content.

Birgit Weyhe: silence. Avant-Verlag, 368 pages, born, € 39.
Book presentation: 4.6. In the “Cantina Fux & Ganz”, Bodenstedtstr. 16, Hamburg-Altona, beginning 7:30 p.m.