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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/hawkshaw1024 on 2025-04-23 22:11:43+00:00.
Content note for fascism and occasional bad language.
Today we're unpacking some incredibly stale drama from the 1960s. If you're deep into the Franco-Belgian comic book fandom, you might have encountered statements like this:
While several translations [of Astérix et les Goths] were made, including an English version in 1974, one translation for West Germany later drew criticism from the creators for including political propaganda and had to be reprinted as a result.
There is rarely any further information, just passing references that a translation "was rejected for being too extreme" or "had to be redone after complaints from the publisher." Today we'll be unpacking what, exactly, happened with this infamous first edition, and why it's so bad. Sources for this are readily available, but they tend to be in French or German; any translation errors should be assumed to be mine. I've tried to sprinkle in quotations and pictures were possible, but a lot of this will be me summarising stuff. Apologies.
A final note before we start: When I say "German" or "Germany," I mean the modern people and country. "Germani" and "Germania," meanwhile, refer to a people and a region of the ancient Roman era. This distinction matters because of nationalist myths that entangle them, and we do not cede an inch of ground to these people.
Background information
Okay, so, Germany. That's a country in central Europe. This story takes place in the 1960s, when there were two of them - a "West Germany" (capitalist democracy) and an "East Germany" (communist dictatorship.) Our story takes place in West Germany during the 1960s.
Asterix the Gaul (orig. "Astérix le Gaulois"), written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo, is a French comic book franchise. It's about two Gaullish warriors, Asterix and Obelix, who live around 60 BCE and have non-historical adventures across the Roman empire. The comic began publication in 1959 and by the 1960s, it was one of the biggest things going.
Fix and Foxi and Lupo modern were comics magazines as well, but West German. You can think of them as a local variant of "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories," and they were ran by business patriarch Rolf Kauka - once known as "the German Walt Disney." From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, these were some of the most successful comics magazines in West Germany.
As for Paul Rudolf Kauka (1917-2000), he was the founder and editor-in-chief of Kauka Publishing, and he is the central character of today's story. He was a real piece of work.
Introducing: Rolf Kauka (1917-1952)
Kauka was born in eastern Germany in 1917. Before the second World War, he was as a group leader in the Hitler Youth; during that war, he served as a junior officer in the Wehrmacht. (That being the regular army.) He was eventually assigned to the Eastern Front, where he reached the rank of Oberstleutnant (First Lieutenant) and received multiple awards for exceptional performance.
After the war, he settled down in West Germany, and decided to try his hand at publishing. He got his start cranking out pulpy entertainment such as "true crime" stories, which brought him modest success. Kauka had greater ambitions, however, and he waited for an opportunity to come his way.
This opportunity arrived in the form of American comic books. Comic strips had existed before, of course, but comic books were new. They were met with general disdain - just another vile Americanism brought over by occupying soldiers, like jeans and bubblegum. Go read a real book, dummy.
Manfred Schmidt (1970): Soon after the war I got my hands on a colourful comic brought from the United States, which was called Superman. (...) I decided to start parodying this completely primitive style of storytelling so thoroughly that no one would care about such bubble-filled stupid-literature meant for illiterates.
But some people saw potential in these American-style comic books and magazines, a group which included Rolf Kauka.
Kauka's publishing empire (1953-1964)
So, he started cranking out his own comics. These had little artistic value and were heavily derivative, and most of them were one-shots. Kauka proved to have good business instincts, however. After a few false starts, he hit gold with cheeky fox twins Fix and Foxi, who would then form the core of a publishing empire. (Fix is the one with the slightly messier hair.)
They live in a society of animal-people, where they have low-stakes adventures such as picking apples, building soapbox cars, and playing pranks on city wolf Lupo. This was a big hit with the post-war German youth.
Kauka himself contributed little to the comics, but he always kept total editorial control. He was a patriarch and a small-business tyrant, who ran his business in the military style and received neither input nor criticism from his subordinates. He always claimed personal credit for everything his company did, and it would be rude if I didn't hang him with all this rope that he just gave me.
Also, every magazine opened with a "Your Rolf Kauka" column, written by him alone, and full of just... honestly, I'm not sure what to call this.
Hello friends! One can argue over whether a child stops being a child at age 10 or 14. But what then? What should we call the ex-child? Our mother's tongue has no modern word for this. We are retarded. It is embarassing, but there is no fitting word for a girl and a boy between 14 and 21. (...) The German language borrowed from the American slang here, and imported the meaningless wordlet "teenager." On one hand, you are the youth, the future of Europe - but on the other side of the medal, you are simply, dumbly, lumply, the "teenagers." (...) Have you ever thought about how much disdain and immaturity is concealed behind this imported "word creation?" (...)
50 Marks to the one who finds a way out of this conundrum and turns up a good replacement for this boring nothing. (...) Are you a bobbysoxer, a youth, a maiden, a boy, a sprocket, a young lady, a young gentleman - a teen, rowdy, young citizen, damsel, lassie? (...)
Your Rolf Kauka.
Then, in the early 1960s, Kauka Publishing reached a bulk licencing deal with Franco-Belgian publishing houses Dargaud and Dupuis, who had comics. The package included big titles such as Lucky Luke, The Smurfs, Gaston, Tintin, Spirou... and Asterix. German versions of these were released starting right away.
... I say "versions" and not "translations," because they barely resembled to the source material. The writers renamed characters, dropped and re-arranged panels, and rewrote storylines if Kauka didn't like them. They took a heavy-handed approach, even by the standards of the 1960s, but it sometimes went okay. The Kauka version of "Die Schlümpfe" (The Smurfs/Les Schtroumpfs) or "Tim und Struppi" (The Adventures of Tintin/Les Aventures de Tintin) still have their fans. They caught on, so I guess it must've worked well enough.
Where it absolutely didn't work at all was with Asterix. Those books, Kauka had apparently decided, needed to be fortified with A Message. He wasn't gonna let his workers waste their time messing around with some shortstack Frenchman when divine Germania was waiting just across the Rhine.
Siggi und Babarras (1965-1966)
So, Astérix and Obélix were resettled and renamed to "Siggi" and "Babarras," Germanic warriors. (Remember, Germanic, with a "g" as in "golf.") The first Asterix book that received a German version was Asterix and the Golden Sickle, rendered here as "Siggi und die Goldene Sichel." It was published in spring of 1965 via "Lupo modern," which was a Kauka magazine for ~~teenagers~~ eh, sprockets.
In the original story, Astérix and Obélix set out to get a new golden sickle for their druid, foiling a plot of the Lutetian prefect along the way. This also happens in the translation, but the details are. Uh. Here, let me just go over the opening page real quick.
Roughly around the turning point of history, the Germani have to desperately defend themselves against unwanted guests from all directions. Except for the small fortress of Bonnhalla, on the right side of the Rhine, all Germania is currently under occupation. There, a small group of dedicated fighters has curled up and fortified itself against the overwhelming might of the enemies.
Those leftover Germani are not under serious attack by the enemies. "Perhaps we can make use of them as allies or gladiators at some point," they think. Bonnhalla is nevertheless standing on lost ground, and all thoughts of reunification with the brothers and sisters across Germania have been buried unde...
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