Podcast “Feel Hamburg” with comic artist Maren Amini | NDR.de - NDR 90.3

As of: October 30, 2024 5:00 a.m

With her first graphic novel “Ahmadjan and the Hoopoe”, cartoonist Maren Amini not only told a touching family story, but also experienced a very personal, artistic process.

Amini tells the life story of her father Ahmadjan, who was the first Afghan to receive asylum in Germany after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Ahmadjan is a graphic designer and artist himself, and his experiences and works were significantly incorporated into the graphic novel.

The moving family story behind the graphic novel

For Maren Amini, illustrating this story was an emotional journey. “I actually cried the whole time I was drawing and then heard such tragic music. I was very moved for months, throughout the entire book,” she describes the intense emotional work on the book. It was particularly emotional for her to deal with her father’s works, which she found rather frightening as a child: “I was always just afraid. There were so many dark images. When I had to go to the toilet, I had to look at so scary ones “I always thought they were so dark and didn’t like them at all.”

Broadcast: “Feel Hamburg” | Oct 30, 2024 | 8:00 p.m. | by Kaiser, Daniel

40 Min
| Available until October 30, 2026

With her first graphic novel “Ahmadjan and the Hoopoe”, cartoonist Maren Amini not only told a touching family story, but also experienced a very personal, artistic process.

Amini tells the life story of her father Ahmadjan, who was the first Afghan to receive asylum in Germany after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Ahmadjan is a graphic designer and artist himself, and his experiences and works were significantly incorporated into the graphic novel.

For Maren Amini, illustrating this story was an emotional journey. It was particularly emotional for her to deal with her father’s works, which she found to be rather frightening and dark as a child. Now, as an adult artist, she was able to rediscover and understand these images and feel what it must feel like to be so far away from home and such a terrible war is raging there. The graphic novel is not only a story of escape and loss, but also an examination of her father’s artistic legacy and a shared processing of family history.

In addition to her work as an illustrator, Maren Amini has also established herself as a cartoonist – a form of artistic expression that she discovered during her studies at the University of Applied Sciences. But her path there wasn’t easy. Cartoons were treated rather neglected here and had a rather negative connotation. Cartoons are much more difficult than the much better paid illustrations. You have to draw a picture and write a joke about it. Cartoons are also very current, but are poorly paid.

In a conversation with Daniel Kaiser, the illustrator also talks about the encounters in her studio and her life as the child of an Afghan father and a Hamburg mother.

Click here to go directly to Maren Amini’s homepage:

and here you can find the podcast recommendation in the ARD audio library:

Now, as an adult artist, she was able to rediscover and understand these images. “It was really touching to really look at these pictures again and find out the titles and feel what it must feel like when you’re so far away from home and there’s such a terrible war raging.” The graphic novel is So not just a story of escape and loss, but also an examination of her father’s artistic legacy and a shared processing of family history.

A rocky road to becoming a cartoonist

Maren Amini mostly works in her studio.

In addition to her work as an illustrator, Maren Amini has also established herself as a cartoonist – a form of artistic expression that she discovered during her studies at the University of Applied Sciences. But her path there wasn’t easy. “I really learned to draw cartoons again at ‘Caricatura’ in Kassel. I never noticed it at the time, but during my studies it was almost described as derogatory: ‘That looks too cartoony.’ There was somehow high art and then there was cartoon. That was somehow on another level,” she explains the underlying hierarchy that she experienced while studying art.

Cartoons are underrated

Despite these academic reservations, she dedicated herself to cartoons, an art form that she finds particularly challenging: “I found it totally strange that it wasn’t even taught at our school because it’s so current and one of the most difficult art. Do it “Make a drawing and then put a saying underneath it and then let strangers who don’t know you laugh about it.” The financial reality of being a cartoonist is also sobering. Amini emphasizes how difficult it is to make a living from cartoons. “There are newspapers where you get 30 to 70 euros for a cartoon and for an illustration that doesn’t have a joke underneath you get 400 to a thousand euros.” This discrepancy shows how little appreciation cartoons receive as an art form in some media, even though they often require more creativity and precision than pure illustration.

In a conversation with Daniel Kaiser, the illustrator also talks about the encounters in her studio and her life as the child of an Afghan father and a Hamburg mother.

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