Where do cucumber pickles and trunk cords live? Who invented bubble sucking? Why is Mickey Mouse wearing four-finger gloves and Donald Duck not wearing pants? And what does it mean when “Schnurch!” stands or a minor character mumbles “Schnaptus, Claptus, Totalraptus”? Duckburg is an enigmatic place.
From the point of view of Donaldists there are several parallel worlds. The Duck clan lives in the Anaversum, while Mickey Mouse, Minnie and other rodents scurry around in the mouse cosmos. Donaldists only allow those drawn by Carl Barks and by Dr. Erika Fuchs translated stories apply, but the world of comic ducks and mice is really a limitless, cross-cultural phenomenon. The world’s most famous mouse is called Mikki Hiiri in Finnish, Musse Pigg in Swedish and Mi Lao Shu in Chinese.
In the German Mickey Mouse magazine, ducks, mice, dogs, cats and humans have coexisted peacefully for 70 years. Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse first appeared on August 29, 1951 in the then newly founded Ehapa-Verlag. On the cover, Micky and Goofy could be seen in a plane that was in a dive – the start of a success story. With 3,300 published issues and 1.3 billion copies sold, the German-language edition of Mickey Mouse is considered the most successful children’s magazine in Europe – even if the circulation has been falling as dramatically as the plane on the first cover for years. Does such an old-fashioned medium even stand a chance against computer games, Youtube, Netflix and Co. in children?
The Christian conservative educated bourgeoisie demonized the picture stories as filth and trash
“Young people are digitized earlier and earlier,” says Marko Andric, Editorial Director at Egmont Ehapa Media GmbH in Berlin. The Mickey Mouse editor-in-chief knows that Minecraft, Tiktok and Whatsapp are actually more attractive than print products for children and young people. Even so, the Mickey Mouse brand still works. “The good thing is that we have a special status with our Duckburg comics,” says Andric, “Donald and Micky are so well known and loved that trust in our products is passed on from generation to generation.” Even if the magazine costs 3.99 euros and is not free like most digital entertainment channels.
The “colorful monthly magazine” cost 75 pfennigs in 1951, and the price corresponded to the average hourly wage at the time. The magazine, incidentally the first magazine in Germany to be printed completely in color, was not classified as a high-quality art form despite the high price, on the contrary. The Christian conservative educated bourgeoisie demonized the, from today’s point of view, harmless picture stories as filth and trash. In large-scale exchange campaigns, western magazines, medical series and comics were exchanged for supposedly good books. The “bad” notebooks were burned or buried – the Disney group had already played down everything and colored it completely.
The editor-in-chief and translator Erika Fuchs, actually a doctor of art historian, shaped the magazine texts for many years with intelligence and subtle irony.
(Photo: imago / WEREK)
In the 1950s, Donald, Mickey and Co. were in a fabulous fantasy world in which there was no alcohol, no death and no sex. Instead there were stories with Ede Wolf and the three little pigs that were more reminiscent of Grimm’s fairy tales than of the reality of the post-war period. In the American original, Mickey Mouse was initially an anarchic figure who cheekily stood up to the big and strong. That the German Mickey MouseEdition didn’t seem quite as staid as the Disney group would have liked, was due to a woman who shaped the magazine for many years with intelligence and subtle irony. Erika Fuchs, translator and doctor of art history from Munich, was editor-in-chief of the Mickey Mouse. She translated the comics into German and enhanced them with classic quotes (“Can I stamp armies out of the earth?”), Deliberately stilted idioms (“Schnurrli, what ficht dich?”) And crazy word creations (“Schnurpsrüssler”) . Perhaps her greatest merit is the enrichment of the German language with the ericative: onomatopoeic expressions such as “Schnorch”, “Klickeradoms” and “Gazong”.
Ducks, dog-nosed dogs and mice are now walking around with smartphones and working on laptops
In terms of language, Mickey Mouse has always subtly adapted to the times. In 2021, Tick, Trick and Track will have words like “awesome” and “cool” up their sleeves. But they would never say “Alter”, “Digga” or “stable”, assures editor-in-chief Andric. Speaking of stable: the edition of the Mickey Mouse magazine As with almost all print products, it is declining, but has been stable for three years. According to the IVW, the average sold circulation of the two-week title is 72,000. That is a far cry from the circulation of the 1990s, when in some cases a million copies were printed per issue. The children’s and youth magazines with the highest circulation are currently Lego Ninjago (182,000 copies), Princess lillifee (150,000), that is in fourth place Funny paperback book from Ehapa with 125,000 copies. Mickey Mouse appears every two weeks and is only 10th with 72,000 copies sold.
Brooding, brooding: what could be the reason? If you observe it correctly, quotes from Schiller have become rarer in Duckburg. That has to do with the fact that the readership can hardly do anything with allusions to “Wallenstein”. Ducks, dog-nosed dogs and mice are now running around with smartphones, working on laptops and surfing the Duck. You read something on Duckipedia and watch videos on Dutube. “If Donald was using a rotary telephone, the children would ask us what he was doing,” says editor-in-chief Andric.
In the anniversary issue, Uncle Dagobert is developing a successful app with Daniel Düsentrieb, Mickey Mouse has adventures on a game console. In the editorial section, the Fantastischen Vier, Andreas Gabalier and Rea Garvey congratulate them on their birthday, plus there is a page with jokes that readers have sent in. The gimmicks at Mickey Mouse Called “Extras”. The current issue comes with a bag with the good old tadpole shrimp, every now and then the popular whoopee pillow has to serve.
That Mickey Mouse magazine can also be found on the Internet; On the site you can watch films, order booklets and click on profiles of the most popular characters. Is this the beginning of the digital change in Duckburg? Rather not. In contrast to the competition, who markets their products on all channels – from plastic toys to computer games to TV series and the associated comic magazine – Ehapa prefers to stick with the tried and tested. “With a comic, the children can safely withdraw into a fun world”, says Marko Andric, “without a television, smartphone and homework.” It’s not much different today than it was in 1951.