Columbusstraat 7 in Düsseldorf is a high city villa with a classic half-timbered facade, located in the chic Oberkassel district. It is the home of the lawyer Karl Dahmen and his family. In the same street, diagonally opposite, is an even more impressive house. That is the party headquarters of the NSDAP. The Catholic lawyer Dahmen is having none of it; National Socialism will only bring misery to Germany, he is firmly convinced. Four years later, in 1939, he passed and Dahmen became a member of Hitler’s party.
Karl Dahmen is the grandfather of comic strip maker Tobi Dahmen (1971), who has lived and worked in the Netherlands for years. Over the past eight years, he delved into his family history, especially the period from 1935 to 1945. He talked a lot with his father about that time and asked him the simple question: how could this happen? Tobi’s father, from 1932 and therefore a child during the war years, was loyal to his own father in those conversations, who could not prevent anything and was not responsible for what happened. There were forces that one could not withstand.
From triumph to bitterness
Dahmen continued this and in his comic strip shows the all-pervading influence of National Socialism, seen from a German point of view. At a leisurely pace he meticulously tells the history of the Dahmen and Funcke families, on his mother’s side. Chapter by chapter, often indicated by date and location, we follow other family members and their movements. Like Karl Dahmen, who as a lawyer quickly comes under a magnifying glass: his professional sense of justice is playing tricks on him. He changes tack when his principles no longer offer him and his family safety. From then on he gradually became more and more convinced and became a fanatical advocate of the National Socialist narrative. Or take Heinz Funcke, who is a supervisor in a factory that makes screws. At first he can keep a low profile, but as war production is scaled up, he too comes into the picture of those in power.
The paper is also grayer than usual, which Dahmen seems to make a connection with his story
Karl’s two eldest sons, Eberhard and Peter, leave for the front, in Russia, Italy and North Africa. Their experiences are told through real documents, such as letters, diaries, photos and summons orders. These sources enabled Dahmen to precisely describe the developments during the war years. Eberhard, for example, is the staunch soldier who quickly works his way up to officer. His letters initially have a triumphant tone, but later they become bitter. His brother Peter, on the other hand, constantly has doubts. Dahmen portrays this cleverly: in the letters home, the brothers try to keep up the appearance that they are doing well, but what we see is a completely different reality.
Grayscale
Dahmen worked Columbus Street out in shades of gray. Nothing is really black or white, the paper is also grayer than usual, which seems to make a connection with his story. We tend to present everything unambiguously, as a history with only room for good and bad people. Dahmen shows that it is much more complex than that, without passing any direct judgement. He does this very subtly: when he asks his father later in life how his generation looks back on the war, he has no ready answer. The big thing happened piece by piece; the individual person had little influence on it. Shame and powerlessness; when simple answers are not available, people tend to avoid.
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