Illustrated Lecture on "The Mosaic by Hannes Hegen—Comics in the GDR"
Against a backdrop of mosques and minarets, a group of furious men in harem pants and turbans on their heads, brandishing scimitars and halberds, chase after three bulbous-nosed goblins. They, too, are dressed in Oriental costumes. One is black-haired, the second is blond, and the third is red-haired. This is how Dig, Dag, and Digedag first appeared on the cover of the magazine MOSAIK in December 1955. From then on, the Digedags—as everyone called them—would be faithful companions to generations of children and young people in East Germany.
The man who brought this to life was known to everyone simply as Hannes Hegen. His real name was Johannes Hegenbarth; he came from a large family of glassmakers and artists in the Sudetenland and found his way to his “picture stories” of the Digedags through arts and crafts and press caricatures.
Hannes Hegen’s artistic estate has been housed at the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig (ZFL) since 2009, where Prof. Dr. Bernd Lindner worked as a research associate and exhibition curator until 2015. The cultural historian and sociologist is one of the few people who had the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with the artist and was ultimately commissioned to write his biography in 2015.
In 2022 , “Das MOSAIK von Hannes Hegen – Comic in der DDR” was published ; it was reissued in an updated version last year to mark his 100th birthday. On September 1, Prof. Lindner will introduce us to Hannes Hegen and *MOSAIK* in an approximately 60-minute, richly illustrated PowerPoint presentation.