Tobias Seicherl is the title character of a

comic a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicat ...

drawn by

Viennese Viennese may refer to: * Vienna, the capital of Austria * Viennese people, List of people from Vienna * Viennese German, the German dialect spoken in Vienna * Viennese classicism * Viennese coffee house, an eating establishment and part of Viennese ...

caricaturist A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. List of caricaturists * Abed Abdi (born 1942) * Abril Lamarque (1904–1999) * Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) * Alex Gard (1900–1948) * Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977) * Alfre ...

Ladislaus Kmoch (alias Ludwig Kmoch, 1897–1971), a self-taught

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...

. The comic appeared as a

daily strip A daily strip is a newspaper comic strip format, appearing on weekdays, Monday through Saturday, as contrasted with a Sunday strip, which typically only appears on Sundays. They typically are smaller, 3–4 grids compared to the full page Sunday s ...

in the Austrian tabloid '' Das Kleine Blatt'' published by Vorwärts-Verlag from October 5, 1930. Tobias Seicherl can be regarded as the first continental

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an daily comic strip. The comic strip has been written in

and was one of the first European comics featuring balloons.Ludwig Kmoch (lambiek.net)
/ref> ‘Seicherl’ has two meanings in Viennese, which are semantically connected. The original meaning of ‘small sieve’ later gave rise to the second meaning of ' weakling'; someone who lacks

moral character Moral character or character (derived from ) is an analysis of an individual's steady Morality, moral qualities. The concept of ''character'' can express a variety of attributes, including the presence or lack of virtues such as empathy, courag ...

- letting everything ‘sieve straight through’ them.

Main characters

Tobias Seicherl, a typical petit bourgeois, was drunk on many occasions and often took to strolling through the streets of Vienna with his walking stick, pipe and dog named Struppi. It's somewhat ironic that the dog was the voice of reason in this strip. Little was known or discussed about Seicherl’s career or his living conditions, which made him the ideal person with which social-democratic readers could identify themselves, helping to vent their frustrations toward the

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

of the time.

History

Between 1930 and 1939, the comic was published on a daily basis in ''Das Kleine Blatt'', although sporadically so into the first part of 1940. The series was politically orientated between the years 1930–1934, in which Tobias Seicherl was seen to sympathize with

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

. However, from 1934 onwards, with the introduction of the Austro-fascist dictatorship, Seicherl inevitably became unpolitical. By the end of the 1930s the strip displayed some nationalistic tendencies. Tobias Seicherl was so popular that special edition volumes have been published as early as 1933. After the closing days of

WWII World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

attempts were made to revive the comic strip. From 1958 to 1961, the Seicherl series appeared in a variety of different Viennese newspapers yet was unable to once again achieve the high point of its earlier success.

Main characters

History

References

Further reading