“Garfield is a human in a cat costume,” his creator Jim Davis once said in an interview. And when Donald Duck, his Uncle Scrooge and their nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie sit down with Daisy at the festively decorated Christmas table to happily dine on turkey, it’s normal. But that required a long process, which comics historian Alexander Braun presents in an exhibition for Grimmwelt Kassel (until April 12, 2026) and in the accompanying catalog.
Earliest examples 32,000 years ago
Jan Sauerwald from Grimmwelt writes in the catalog that the first examples of this development can be seen in cave drawings 32,000 years ago and continues “in the fables of Aesop (620-560 BC) or Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)”. The word anthropomorphism is made up of the Greek word for human and form “and describes the attribution of human characteristics to animate or inanimate beings and objects.” The picture sheet appeared as a mass medium in the 19th century; in 1832, Gustav Kühn‘s picture sheet factory sold well over a million sheets throughout Europe.
Alexander Braun has created a fantastically illustrated show and book, which makes it clear what an enormous impact these arches had on people in the 19th century. Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908), among others, drew for the “Munich Picture Sheet”. For Braun, “the picture sheet culture of the 19th century represents an important evolutionary stage towards image consumption as a mass medium.” For Braun, the animal fable – but also a developmental boost – was achieved by Jean de La Fontaine in France in the 17th century: “Lower animals as heroes offered a high degree of identification.” And so these animals are “figures of thought, projection surfaces and elements of world interpretation,” as Sauerwald notes. The Frenchman Jean-Jacques Grandville (1803-1847) broke the boundaries of the world of myths with his drawings of fish, people baiting people, or riding animals: “Figures based on the shape of animals could from now on both refer to tradition and view all historical baggage as having been discarded,” writes Braun.
The triumph of comics
When comics were invented in the USA around 1900 (and also speech bubbles), the great triumph of anthropomorphized animals began. From then on, newspapers by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst entered into a happy marriage with comics. Braun explains how “the question of which comic series a newspaper had to offer and how popular they were” influenced the purchasing decision. The New York Times, Mail and The World were mass media, the workers had just fought for Sunday as a day off and the Sunday papers were decorated accordingly lavishly: James Swinnerton (1875-1974), for example, drew small, anthropomorphized bears for the “San Francisco Examiner”. Artists like Gustav “Gus” Dirks (1881-1902) and his brother Rudolph (1877-1968) – both descendants of German immigrants – caused a sensation with “The Katzenjammer Kids” (by Rudolph) and “Bugville” (Gus). In “Bugville” insects were the big heroes.
Walt Disney & Co
All of this inevitably led to Walt Disney, the great comic and film visionary who caused a sensation with his Mickey Mouse. For Braun it is clear that Mickey “was clearly read as a human being by the audience.” Later, the great Carl Barks formed the Disney universe and gave Donald Duck his many characteristics. The raging drake, a model of resilience, is not just any chattering rager. We all see ourselves again in Donald Duck when, as a “perpetual loser” – which he actually isn’t – he goes out into the world day after day with great inventiveness. Donald has become a projection surface for many of our fears, anxieties and big dreams. Donald is one of us. A person with problems and hopes. Just like Garfield or the tiger Hobbes from one of the best comic strips of all time: “Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson. Calvin imagines his cuddly toy alive – and experiences high-energy adventures of pure vitality with Hobbes, showing himself to be a first-class philosopher.
