GDR comic-in the spell of the Digedags

A real fan of the »mosaic« sees only digedags everywhere. Last winter, an exhibition on the “travel gallery” native of Friedrich Nerly, who created numerous cityscapes from Venice around the mid -19th century and was significantly shaped by today’s view of the lagoon city. Michael Hebestreit looked at the exhibition and was thrilled: “These were exactly the perspectives that Hannes Hegen drew!”

Hannes Hegen, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday on May 16, is the inventor of the “mosaic”, the most legendary comic of the GDR, which he himself preferred to describe as “picture story”. The first issue of the series, in which the tubing main characters DIG, DAG and Digedag are sent on adventurous trips to the Middle Ages, to space or the wild west, appeared in December 1955, almost exactly 70 years ago. The double anniversary of the author and the magazine series takes the contemporary history forum Leipzig (ZFL) as an opportunity for a “small but fine” exhibition, as director Uta Bretschneider formulates.

On the one hand, this recognizes Hannes Hegen, who was called Johannes Hegenbarth with a bourgeois name, was born in the Czech Böhmisch Kamnitz (now Česká Kamenice) and initially learned glass painters. He later studied at the Leipzig University of Graphics and Book Art. His early designs included a goblin that was supposed to encourage GDR citizens to bring used bottles, glasses and waste paper to the collection point. Nowadays, the goblin is largely forgotten, in contrast to the Digedags, which achieved cult status in the GDR and, now, as it is called in the Leipzig exhibition title, have become the “myth”.

A proof of this is the extremely lively fan scene, which is not available in this form in any other comic and which is also recognized in and with the exhibition. Five fans were involved in their development and were “ko-courses”, to a certain extent, says Bretschneider. Their house had in 2009, five years before Hegen’s death, whose extensive archive stocks received, including drawings, photos, letters and furniture. With their help, four exhibitions on the “mosaic” have already been developed in the past few years. So far, there have been no fans. “It was a premiere for us,” says Bretschneider.

A comic that produces a lot of “secondary literature”.

Michael Hebestreit is one of the fans who participated in the exhibition. He first wondered when he had become one, he says. As a child, he was at most eager reader. The family requirements were favorable: his grandma had a newspaper kiosk in Erfurt. The reference of the booklets, the edition of which was initially 100,000, up to the end of Digedag history in 1975, which was founded in a disagreement between Hegen and the publisher, and the demand was never able to cover.

There were many reasons for why the booklets were so popular and comparable rows as the “Atze”, founded in 1958, with the comic figures Fix and fax. The stories that a “mosaic collective” conducted by Hegen told, had told wit and were memorable; Some readers were able to quote the knee verses of the knight Runkel von Rübenstein, with which the Digedags traveled to the Orient of the 14th century. In addition, they were able to accompany their heroes in distant, foreign worlds and age – which, of course, had not sprung their imagination. A paper box in the exhibition proves how meticulously collecting the authors to geography and architecture, clothing, everyday objects as well as the flora and fauna of the respective eras and regions. The “mosaic” was a “” Baedeker “of her child’s dreams for his readers,” said the writer Christoph Dickmann once. With Michael Hebestreit, it even significantly shaped the choice of career. When reading, he says, “always lying next to it”. Nowadays he is a cartographer.

His, as he puts it, “fan work” started later. In one of the “mosaic” exchanges taking place regularly in East Germany, he was surprised “how many people captivate the magazine”. A first “mosaic” fan club had already been created in Apolda in Thuringia in 1988, at that time under the roof of the GDR cultural association. In the meantime, there are numerous such clubs and more than a dozen fanzines, i.e. magazines published by fans for fans, which circle the Digedag universe in a wide variety of articles. Hebestreit believed that as a trained printing technician could be able to contribute to their design. In the meantime, he is one of the co-editors of the “Mosaiker”, a fanzine laid in Erfurt, which in his external presentation is reminiscent of the old “mosaic” booklets and his number 54 appeared in May on the occasion of Hannes Hannes’ 100th birthday is on his traces in his temporary Leipzig.

One of the special features of the “mosaic” also includes that it produces extensive “secondary literature”. Once the copywriters and draftsmen of the series of pictures were practically scientific: the costume designer Edith Szafranski, for example, who later became Hannes Hegen’s wife, was responsible for dressing the figures in historically coherent costumes. Nowadays, many fans also looked at the “mosaic” and the Digedags from a “scientific perspective”, says Zfl boss Bretschneider. There is an online encyclopedia called Mosa Pedia, which contains over 20,000 articles, and many well-founded specialist books. Together with four colleagues, the cartographer Hebestreit has just released an elaborately designed atlas, which traces the travel routes of the Digedags and the places of their adventures under the title “From the Orient to the Nucleon”. An example: an “hidden object” to be seen in the Leipzig exhibition as a draft, which represents an air landing above the ancient Rome. In the Hebest executive Atlas, interested readers experienced which historical buildings once drew Hannes Hegen and his employees – and which, as it is called in the Atlas, contained “obvious failures” of the comic.

Such publications are undoubtedly aimed at hard -boiled fans – mostly people who grew up with the “mosaic” and, like the lifting dispute, who was born in 1962, have become older with him. There is only limited youngsters for the scene, he admits. An attempt is made to interest a younger audience with stage pieces or an animation series. In his opinion, not everything does not meet the high demands of the “mosaic”. Rather as a lovers for die -hard pendants, he also sees publications such as a “mosaic” with the title “The duel on the Newa”, which in a historical presentation tells a story that has failed in 1964. Hebestreit would, of course, wish that the Digedags are doing like the French comic hero Spirou and Fantasio, whose adventures are increasingly being knitted by new draftsmen. The “mosaic,” he says, need “new stories and characters that are also interested in today’s children”. Then an exhibition for the 100th anniversary of the booklet would be well attended.

»Myth Mosaic? Hannes Hegen, his work and the fans «. Until May 31, 2026 in the contemporary history forum Leipzig, Grimmaische Straße 6