E. O. Plauen was the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 of Erich Ohser (March 18, 1903 – April 5, 1944) (some sources give his birth year as 1909), a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

 best known for his strip Vater und Sohn ("Father and Son").

Life and work

Ohser was born in Untergettengrün, nowadays an outlying centre of Adorf

Adorf (Vogtland)

Adorf is a small town and municipality in the Vogtlandkreis to the south-west of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Adorf can be translated as "A-village", the "A" coming from old German word for water . Gettengrün, a village within the municipality, borders on the Czech Republic.-History:Adorf...

, in the Vogtland

Vogtland

The term Vogtland refers to a region reaching across the German free states of Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia and into the Czech Republic . The name of the region contains a reference to the former leadership by the Vögte of Weida, Gera and Plauen, which translates approximately to advocates or lord...

. When he was four years old, his family moved to Plauen

Plauen

Plauen is a town in the Free State of Saxony, east-central Germany.It is the capital of the Vogtlandkreis. The town is situated near the border of Bavaria and the Czech Republic.Plauen's slogan is Plauen - echt Spitze.-History:...

 (hence his choice of pseudonym). He completed his studies at the Akademie für Graphische Künste und Buchgewerbe in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 in 1928, and began work at the Sächsische Sozialdemokratische Presse. In his work for such democratic magazines as Vorwärts

Vorwärts

Vorwärts was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933 by decision of the party's Halle Congress, as the successor of Berliner Volksblatt, founded in 1884....

, satirical representations of Joseph Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels

Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...

 and Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 earned him the enmity of the Nazis, and he was prohibited from practicing his trade (Berufsverbot). He continued to work under pseudonyms, and from 1940, began again to produce cartoons on political themes. He was arrested on charges of expressing anti-Nazi opinions (reichsfeindliche Äußerungen).

On April 5, 1944 – the day before his trial – Ohser committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 in his cell, no doubt anticipating what befell the longtime friend and associate with whom he had been arrested, Erich Knauf

Erich Knauf

Erich Knauf was a German journalist, writer, and songwriter. He was executed for making jokes about the Nazi regime.- Biography :...

 (journalist, author and editor of the Volkszeitung für das Vogtland), who was executed weeks later.

Vater und Sohn

Vater und Sohn was a generally wordless feature consisting typically of five or six panels, in which a stout, bald man with a moustache and his young son Eric get into and out of various predicaments regarding day to day events. The strip featured slapstick

Slapstick

Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...

 humour most of all (spanking

Spanking

Spanking refers to the act of striking the buttocks of another person to cause temporary pain without producing physical injury. It generally involves one person striking the buttocks of another person with an open hand. When an open hand is used, spanking is referred to in some countries as...

s are frequent) but emphasizes the tender and conspiratorial relationship between the two. The strip appeared from 1934 to 1937 in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, for a total of 157 episodes.

In the early 1990s, the feature was also transformed into a children's book series by Iranian publisher, 'Vazheh', which included explanations of the cartoons (in Persian) along with the strip on the opposite page.

Memorials

In 1968 his ashes were interred in the central cemetery of his hometown, which took over responsibility for the grave's maintenance in 1988. The Städtische Galerie in Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

 mounted an exhibition of his works in 2001.http://www1.karlsruhe.de/Kultur/Galerie/Beendet/e-o-plauen.htm He is also remembered with the E.O. Plauen prize for an outstanding living caricaturist.http://www.e.o.plauen.de/site/eopreistraeger.html Moreover, his "Vater und Sohn" characters have a statue

Statue

A statue is a sculpture in the round representing a person or persons, an animal, an idea or an event, normally full-length, as opposed to a bust, and at least close to life-size, or larger...

in his hometown,http://www.plauen.de/pitcms/.plauen/hauptordner3/e1_o10/e2_o3/bilder1/foto_vater_sohn.jpg where the figures appear on storefronts and tram schedules
http://www.elektrische-plauen.de/seite053.html

External links

• http://lambiek.net/artists/p/plauen_eo.htm
• http://www.kunstsam.de/cartoon_vater_und_sohn.html
• http://www.e.o.plauen.de/site/vaterundsohn.html