Dennis Barchewitz: "The Boxer. The true story of Hertzko Haft"

Mara Fritzsche: Rosa Winkel

Peter Grimm: Subjective memory in the comic "classics" Persepolis and Palestine

Peter Grimm: Joe Sacco: Palestine

Helge Kock: Batman & Robin. The "dynamic duo" in the poems of Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann

Merle Pajenkamp: Comics as a useful addition to history lessons

Hauke Rickers: 2Pac Shakur- Death Rap - The Soul of Jim Crow

Insa Schmidt: "There was once something... Memories of here and over there" by Felix Görmann alias "Flix"

Jannis Stöver: Claim and handling of historical representations in graphic novels

The comic, like the graphic novel, is a creation of two artistic styles. Both the graphic and the literary overlap. The blending of two opposing artistic styles creates a symbiosis: On the one hand, words are read, which can be looked up in case of comprehension problems. On the other hand, the meaning of the images can be interpreted by the reader in many different ways. Both complement each other by making what is not expressed in the text understandable in the picture. Again, the abstract is visualised and what is seen is reinforced by what is written. In this dual language of words and images, a reality created by the author emerges.

The reader can benefit from one advantage when reading the comics: To understand the respective context, they can refer back to the preceding and surrounding panels (individual images) at any time. Words and pictures each have their own function in telling a story. With regard to the representation of history in comics, the graphic representations function as a pictorial store of memories. Comparable to photography, which is about capturing snapshots. Texts, on the other hand, can be seen as memory aids.

Graphic novels not only record memories, but also use representational means that symbolise the past, as it were. Like old, two-colour photographs, the black and white drawings bear witness to their archive and documentary character. The simple, two-colour drawings establish more honest and direct contours than colour depictions. The historian Ole Frahm places the black and white depiction in the context of history. He sees it as the colour of the archive. To this end, he distinguishes between the two colours with different meanings: White is seen as a framed surface such as the sky or a mask, black as the narrated or remembered.