Germany’s More Erudite Donald Duck and “Donaldism”
He still looks pretty good for an 88-year-old duck (as of 2022). The German Donald Duck lives in the town of Entenhausen (Duckburg) with his nephews Tick, Trick and Track (Huey, Dewey and Louie). His wealthy uncle Dagobert Duck (Scrooge McDuck) and the inventor Daniel Düsentrieb (Gyro Gearloose) also live there – in a fantasy world invented by…
A 1974 edition of a German Donald Duck comic book.
If you wanted to say Walt Disney, you’d be wrong. The man who actually invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants was named Carl Barks (1901-2000). Barks was a Disney Studio illustrator and comic-book creator, who went to work for Disney in 1935. It was Barks who invented most of Donald Duck’s world, including Scrooge McDuck. (Donald was created originally by Disney in 1934, as a minor character and foil for Mickey Mouse.) Like all of Disney’s illustrators at the time, Barks remained anonymous, but his work was very recognizable and soon earned him the moniker “the good artist.” His actual name only became known later. Among his fans Carl Barks became as famous as Donald Duck himself.
In Germany, Donald and the duck tales are no Micky Maus operation. The Disney comic books continue to be bestsellers in Germany, and are read by more teens and adults than children. The Lustiges Taschenbuch (LTB, “funny pocketbook”) print editions are more popular than the animated cartoons, so you well may ask just what is it that makes Donald Duck such an attraction in Germany — so popular that a 2009 lavish 8,000-page German collector’s edition sold out despite its hefty price tag of almost $1,900.
One of the main reasons is that Donald Duck in German is distinctly different from Donald Duck in English. That’s because of Erika Fuchs (1906-2005, born Johanna Theodolinde Erika Petri), who began translating the Disney comics into German in 1951. She gave the German Donald a bit more polish and erudition than the original American duck. Fuchs rather freely translated the original English, often putting a more literary German into Donald’s mouth, even creating popular sayings that many Germans know today. She made Donald quack in German until her retirement in 1988.
| Erika Fuchs and Donald “Her interpretations of the comic books often quote (and misquote) from the great classics of German literature, sometimes even inserting political subtexts into the duck tales. Dr. Fuchs both thickens and deepens Mr. Barks’s often sparse dialogues, and the hilariousness of the result may explain why Donald Duck remains the most popular children’s comic in Germany to this day.” – from the Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2009, Why Donald Duck is the Jerry Lewis of Germany (paywall link) |
Carl Barks drew the Donald Duck comics for many years. He started at the Disney Studios in 1935. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons
In post-war Germany, comic books were viewed as a trashy American import and a bad influence on youth. When it published the first Donald Duck and Disney comic books in Germany in 1951, the Egmont Ehapa publishing house (then Ehapa Verlag) wanted to counter that attitude. Fuchs’ clever German translations helped make Donald popular among German kids — and later adults. Today half of the readers in Germany are over 16. Those over 25 make up the core readership, and they take Donald very seriously.
The German fan association D.O.N.A.L.D. (the acronym stands for “German Organization for Non-commercial Followers of Pure Donaldism” in German*) has local chapters, hosts an annual meeting, and maintains the donald.org website. Like a Star Trek convention, the group has trivia and trinkets on display, and offers lectures on “nephew studies” and other “Donaldism” topics.
Another German site devoted to Disney, Donald Duck, and related topics is Duckipedia.de, run by a devoted team of volunteers who have contributed over 4,500 articles since 2005.
| Other Countries The popularity of Donald Duck outside the US extends also to the Nordic nations of Europe. In Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, Donald Duck and other Disney characters had become widely popular by the mid-1930s – thanks to the efforts of Robert S. Hartman, a German representative of Walt Disney until 1941. Known as Aku Ankka in Finland, Donald Duck is still the most popular Disney figure in Scandinavia today. It was a Danish publishing house (Ehapa) that imported Donald Duck to Germany in 1951. |
The Erika Fuchs Museum
Any true comic-book fan should not miss the museum devoted to Donald’s German translator, the Erika-Fuchs-Haus in Schwarzenbach an der Saale, the town where Erika lived with her husband Günter Fuchs, spent much of her life, and where the two are now buried. First opened in August 2015, the Museum für Comic und Sprachkunst (“Museum for Comic Books and the Art of Language”) honors the work of Dr. Erika Fuchs, when she was the translator and editor-and-chief of the ever-popular Micky-Maus-Magazin – which features Donald more than Micky, and is still printed today.
The Erika Fuchs Museum in Schwarzenbach, Germany features her Donald Duck translation work. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons
*Deutsche Organisation nichtkommerzieller Anhänger des lauteren Donaldismus
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