My great-grandfather survived the concentration camp by just a few days. I knew that. But for a long time, I didn’t know any more details.

In recent years, however, I have researched his story – and incorporated my research and the insights I gained from it into this graphic novel. It all began in 2017 during a teacher training course; I have been teaching French, Spanish and Protestant religious education at a grammar school in Oldenburg for a good 20 years. It was then that I learnt about a school textbook on the U-boat bunker ‘Valentin’ near Bremen, written by a Romance languages scholar and historian in collaboration with a survivor who had been one of the forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners used in its construction.

I wondered whether my great-grandfather might also have been there and began to investigate. Relatives in the Netherlands had already been doing so for some time, and I got in touch with them. That very same year, I discovered the first photograph of my great-grandfather in the exhibition at the Wilhelmine barracks and in the Valentin Bunker. I carried out research in archives in Aurich, Oldenburg and Osnabrück, where many of the family records are now accessible.

I realised quite early on that I wanted to create a picture story. On the one hand, I have a soft spot for them and, as a teacher, a personal connection to the subject; on the other hand, I felt the need to make a significant part of my family history visually accessible.

In 2018, a trainee teacher told me about the impressive university seminars on picture stories. More than a decade earlier, I’d wanted to gain an additional qualification in the subject of art at university, but had been turned down at the time due to a lack of places. So I wrote to the lecturer, Natascha Kaßner, and when she invited me to a meeting, I took along my large book, in which I’d been filling pages with four to six pictures each for the past year.

Being allowed to attend the course as an auditor was an outstanding experience for me. Sitting there with all those talented young students and following the course, with its drawing exercises, art history content and food for thought, really motivated me to carry on with this story. The following semester, I took another drawing course with Ms Kaßner and passed the assessment there too. Her numerous instructions and helpful tips played a major part in giving me the courage and perseverance to finish the book. I am very grateful for that.

In total, I worked on the project for four years (reducing my working hours to do so), transferred and coloured around 200 pencil and fineliner drawings with watercolours, learnt to use a specialised graphics programme for the speech bubbles – and am now delighted that my great-grandfather’s story has even been published as a book! The graphic novel is available in bookshops under the title ‘Een Koppke Tee in dunkler Zeit’. “

Marina Zander

This text first appeared in the university newspaper UNI-INFO in April 2021.

Editor: Deike Stolz