Why Donald Duck Is the Jerry Lewis of Germany

[Jet_Jaguar]

I thought that this WSJ article on the German translations of the Donald Duck comic books was pretty interesting (Do any of the German Dojo members read them?):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 62290.html

I especially liked this part, which seems to destroy the argument that comic books are only for the illiterate:

Dr. Fuchs’s Donald was no ordinary comic creation. He was a bird of arts and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with fancy quotations. In one story Donald’s nephews steal famous lines from Friedrich Schiller’s play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe, Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.”

[go]

http://usagiyojimbo.com/other/uyletters ... uck_32.jpg

[Usagi]

My boyfriend, Andy just loves Donald Duck! (And he is German too) - I don't know if he ever read this comic- but i know that he has said when he was a child, he loved to read Donald Duck Comics in German. I have acctually been on a hunt to find some for his for Christmas....but there is no luck yet...

[Jet_Jaguar]

Apparently, Donald Duck is pretty big in Sweden too:

http://www.slate.com/id/2239252/