29 October
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Author: Brigitte Kohn
Speaker: Krista Posch
Editor: Frank Halbach
The Gallic warrior Asterix was born on a midsummer day in 1959. The sun was beating down from the sky outside, but the illustrator Albert Uderzo and the copywriter René Goscinny later couldn’t remember the exact date. There was no reason to mark it on the calendar because everything was as usual, purely routine. The two comic artists, who had already developed several comic heroes together, sat in Uderzo’s living room, with aniseed schnapps and cigarettes, and thought.
Gallic comics wanted
Because on October 29, 1959, a new youth magazine called Pilote was supposed to appear. For this purpose, the editorial team commissioned a French comic hero. Although the European comic scene at the time was very American, with Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse and so on, Pilote wanted to demonstrate independence and convey French culture: not only, but also through comics.
Uderzo found the key word: Gaul. And then the associations between the two artists flew back and forth like ping-pong balls. A Gallic warrior. A small Gallic village in constant resistance against Julius Caesar and Rome. A village with a druid who can brew magic potions from mistletoe. After a quarter of an hour the scene was complete. Goscinny sat down at his typewriter and Uderzo took out his drawing pen.
On paper, the clever Asterix was created, actually an anti-hero, not entirely dissimilar in size and coloring to the well-known Mickey Mouse.
After a few exchanges of words, friend Obelix, a menhir manufacturer with a simple mind, also saw the light of day.
The fact that Obelix fell into the magic potion as a child has now spread to the last corners of the earth. Asterix quickly went beyond the scope of Pilote magazine, became independent and became a cult worldwide.
Cult and legend
Scholars ask themselves why. One thesis goes that Asterix reflects the political temperament of the French. In addition, Asterix and Obelix also travel internationally and get to know the British’s lukewarm Cervisia, the Swiss cheese fondue and the Egyptian Sphinx. Others and strangers are just as happily made fun of as one’s own. Only the uniformed and armored Romans, the global superpower of the day, constantly look stupid. Unless the Gauls throw them through the air until the normally highly efficient battle formations find themselves in a chaotic and demolished heap on the ground.
And at the end of each adventure, the Gauls are back home and have a party. Obelix, as always, sinks his teeth into his wild boar roast, and the bard Troubadix, a musically deficient person, lies bound and gagged to the side so that he cannot sing. Nevertheless, he belongs to it, just as they all belong to it. People know each other in the small Gallic village, they are familiar with each other, they fight and get along. And that is and remains – somehow heartwarming.
