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In the spring of 1992, a Leipzig local newspaper published an article with the headline "Victors of History" (LuK 9). The phrase sounded familiar. As part of the vocabulary of political language in the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.), it was an important discursive instrument to demonstrate the ultimate historical superiority of socialism and its ideology to all types of human societies. However, the tiny article was neither a nostalgic retrospect of a recidivous ideologue, nor was it a reflection of the malicious laughter of the present "victors of history." It is rather an ironic reverence for a cultural artifact that survived socialist East Germany: Dig, Dag and Digedag, three comic strip heroes known as the Digedags (who have, since then, been resurrected in reprints of the original strips).
In this article, I will discuss the America series of the most popular East German comic book mosaik. What image of America did the mosaik draw? Did the socialist "picture magazine" (Bilderzeitschrift) affirm or subvert the official image of America as the archenemy of humankind in general and socialism in particular? In other words: Did the comic function as a constructive instrument of or a deconstructive instrument against Cold War ideology? In contrasting the official image of America with its popular counterpart, I hope I will be able to indicate that American Studies can modestly contribute to a thorough examination of G.D.R. history and the structure of its consciousness. It will, I hope, reveal, the complexities and paradoxes of a past that is simplified by economic thinking and forgotten by consumerist mentality.
In 1979, the Journal of Popular Culture featured an in-depth section about "The Comics as Culture," which was introduced by M. Thomas Inge, an advocate of the comics, who scrutinized the structure and cultural function of an object of popular desire. Seven essays and an interview discussed the comics as "one of the few native American art forms" (634). The focus of the critical text was on the analysis of its cultural function(s) as well as its aesthetic structure. The project of M. Thomas Inge and his co-authors was to be a challenge to traditional reservations about the comic. Referring to the American scene, Inge writes: "Comic books [...] are regarded with considerable suspicion by...