Cover artwork from Mosaik #1, 1976, which featured the introduction of the Abrafaxe.
Lona Rietschel is a German female comic artist who spent most of her life in the former DDR (German Democratic Republic), the communist part of Germany. She was a prominent member of Hannes Hegen's "Mosaik-Kollektiv", and was co-creator of 'Die Abrafaxe' (1976- ), the main series in the children's magazine Mosaik.
Early life and career
Lona Rietschel was born in 1933 in the Polish town of Reppen (Rzepin). She studied fashion graphics and animation. Rietschel changed her ambitions to become an animator when the DEFA animation studios relocated to Dresden. She lived in Berlin, where she worked at the Hochschüle für Bildende Künste. She survived World War II, but in 1949 Germany was officially divided in a Western (BRD) and Eastern (DDR) part. Living in the Eastern side of Berlin, Rietschel now found herself living in a Communist country.
Mosaik
In 1960, Rietschel became a comic artist for the monthly comic magazine Mosaik. She replaced Nikol Dimitriadis, who had fled to West Berlin. She quickly established herself as one of the leading artists of the so-called "Mosaik-Kollektiv", which operated under supervision of Hannes Hegen. Hegen had launched the magazine with the publishing house Verlag Neues Leben in December 1955, and was the creator of the main characters, Dig, Dag and Digedag, known together as the Digedags. Rietschel worked anonymously as a character artist on the children's series 'Digedags', while other studio members such as Horst Boche, Gisela Zimmermann, Egon Reitzl and Heidi Jäger provided the rest of the artwork.
Cover illustrations for Mosaik.
Die Abrafaxe
When in 1975 Hannes Hegen broke his ties with the publishing house Verlag Neues Leben, he took the rights of their hit comic series 'Digedags' with him. Scriptwriter Lothar Dräger quickly developed new lead characters for their magazine Mosaik, which were graphically designed by Rietschel and became known as 'Die Abrafaxe'. They were introduced in the first issue of 1976. Although obviously similar to 'Digedags', 'Die Abrafaxe' were in one way an improvement. The 'Digedags' had always been rather one-dimensional and interchangeable characters. Rietschel therefore gave 'Die Abrafaxe' more distinctive personalities and actual names: Abrax, Brabax and Califax. The trio travelled the world and through the time, initially serving as companions to jesters and other folk characters such as Harlequin, Hodscha Nasreddin, Ludas Matyi and Eulenspiegel. While the Abrafaxe's help for ordinary people against feudal rulers could be interpreted as falling in line with the DDR's official communist propaganda, it was otherwise a straightforward, apolitical children's comic, like most of Mosaik's other content.
Cover illustrations for Mosaik.
Mosaik (1961-1991)
From 1961 onwards, Rietschel and Horst Boche alternated on the majority of the cover artwork of Mosaik. In the early 1980s, they were accompanied by Irmtraut Winkler-Wittig. During this decade, the magazine reached a print run of a million copies per month, while also being distributed to other countries. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Communism was abandoned in Germany and the entire country reunited in 1990, nothing much changed for Mosaik, since it had always been a regular children's magazine. It continued its run, while between 1991 and 1999 Rietschel was their sole cover artist. She remained involved in their production until her retirement in 1999. Since then she has, however, continued to make drawings for anthology publications and the 2006 calendar. Later members of the Mosaik collective were Niels Bülow, Jens Fischer, Cornelia Geppert, Ulf Graupner, Steffen Jähde, Thorsten Kiecker, Markus Koch, Konstantin Kryssow, Andreas Pasda, Jörg Reuter, Thomas Schiewer, Michael Schröter, Jens-Uwe Schubert, Andreas Schulze and Sascha Wüstefeld.
'Die Abrafaxe' from Mosaik #9, 1977.
Recognition
Although her entire body of work was done anonymously, in 2013, Rietschel was honored with the Peng!-Preis for lifetime achievement at the Comics Festival of Munich. At the occasion, an overview book of her career called 'Lona Rietschel: Bilder meines Lebens' was published. An overview exposition was held under that same title in the Gallery Kulturbund Treptow in Berlin from June through August 2014.
Personal life, final years and death
Rietschel's husband was graphic designer Kurt Rietschel (1930-2013), who spent the majority of his career working for the state-owned film studio DEFA. Kurt and Lona Rietschel were additionally responsible for many designs and murals in the Berlin zoo.
Lona Rietschel passed away in Berlin on 19 December 2017, at the age of 84.
Character designs by Lona Rietschel for the Abrafaxe (1975).