„Niemand darf gegen sein Gewissen zum Kriegsdienst mit der Waffe gezwungen werden.“ (Artikel 4 Absatz 3 des Deutschen Grundgesetzes)
Keine 10 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg begriff sich die Bundesrepublik Deutschland wieder als militärische Kraft. Die 1956 neu gegründete Bundeswehr verpflichtete Generationen junger Männer zum Dienst an der Waffe. Das Grundgesetz sah vor, dass man aufgrund von Gewissensnöten den Wehrdienst verweigern konnte, aber noch zu Zeiten von Willy Brandts Kanzlerschaft galt die Kriegsdienstverweigerung als systemzersetzend.
Unter großem Druck und vielen Demütigungen musste die Gewissensnot bewiesen werden. Vor Gutachtern, denen die Bundeswehr mehr galt, als das Wohl der Rekruten. Einer dieser jungen Männer war Hermann Brinkmann, ein überzeugter Pazifist, der 1973 eingezogen wurde. Vergeblich wehrte er sich gegen seinen Einberufungsbefehl. Während der Grundausbildung nahm er sich das Leben …
Hannah Brinkmann arbeitet in ihrem für den Leibinger-Preis nominierten Debüt „Gegen mein Gewissen“ das Schicksal ihres Onkels auf, das in den 1970ern bundesweit Schlagzeilen machte und eine Debatte über die Rechtmäßigkeit der Gewissensprüfung auslöste. Unaufgeregt, einfühlsam und brillant recherchiert, erzählt die Hamburger Comickünstlerin vom Aufbegehren gegen Autoritäten und dem Kampf für das Richtige.
Rezensionen / Pressestimmen
Deutschlandfunk Corso - Andrea Heinze
Zeit Hamburg - Friederike Oertel
rbb inforadio Quergelesen - Nadine Kreuzahler
Was jetzt? / Zeit - Elise Landschek
Junge Welt - Maximilian Schäffer
Live aus dem Bikini / rbb radioeins - Marion Brasch
Arte Journal - Kolja Kandziora
neues deutschland - Karlen Vesper
This comic was developed during a comicjournalism workshop that I was invited to take part in at the Museum for Communication in Berlin - the overall topic was gentrification in Berlin. The journalist Hannah El-Hitami and I worked on a visual reportage about new living concepts in Berlin-Wedding.
The story was published in the TAZ newspaper.
For Strapazin #135 I was invited to create a short graphic narration - the topic of the magazine was “True stories”. I chose to tell a story about D.B. Copper, an infamous American airplane hijacker and the string of events that followed his story.
For the second issue of ODRADEK we chose the topic Flood.
I dealt with the story of Fritz Haber - a jewish German chemist who made lethal gas attacks possible for the first time in WWI. He served the German Kaiser as an ardent patriot. However he also developed the Haber-Bosch-Process, that made it possible to produce artificial fertilizer and feed a starving world - he received the nobel prize for that in 1919. In 1938, with the Nazis regime becoming more and more diabolic, he had to leave Germany - he didn't survive the exile in Cambridge and died a year later. After finishing the story I was left with the questions:
Was he a hero? Or a culprit? A victim? Or a villain?
I developed this comic in the comic journalism workshop Alphabet of Arrival. 12 journalists and 12 comic artists were invited to participate and work on stories about migration and arriving in a foreign country. The project was established by the German Comic Association (Deutscher Comic Verein e.V.) and in cooperation with the Central of Political Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung). I worked with Marlene Goetz - a french speaking journalist - on this story about refugees who are minors and very traumatized. We concentrated on ways to treat them and how many still fall through the cracks. All the stories that were made during the workshop are available on the Alphabet of Arrival website. There you can also find mine and Marlenes story with a translation.
"Kindersegen" is a work of fiction. The story takes place in Werlte, a small town in western Germany, close to the dutch border and begins in the year 1890. It’s about mental illness, psychoanalysis, an unlucky marriage and the German countryside before the Nazis rise to power.
The story was part of a project with other comic artists, it was published with Anke Feuchtenberger and the Mami Verlag in 2013.
For an arts project I looked into the experiments of some scientists with monkeys in the beginning of the 20th century. The story about Winthrop Kellogg struck me the most. He raised the monkey Gua and his son together and experimented with the monkey's and the Baby's physical and cognitive development. While researching the story I came upon some old pictures of monkeys being sent into space and I integrated it in my research, for aesthetic reasons. Especially the Propaganda and advertising posters from the soviet union regarding space travel are esthetically very appealing to me.
I developed this story together with an environmental law organization in Berlin (UFU). The idea was to explain pending environmental law cases in comic form to make them understandable and interesting for the public. This was the first visual journalism project I worked on, I had to do all the research for the story.
The story is about the overfishing problems in the Amatique Bay/Guatemala that cause aggression, poverty and environmental problems in the area. The main protagonist is Juliza who is in part a real women I interviewed for the story. She works for an environmental agency in the Amatique Bay. Of course the story is partly fictional to keep the dramaturgy suspenseful. However the historical and general facts are carefully researched.