German cartoonist Walter Moers touches a nerve with his satirical comic strip romp about Hitler

By URSULA SAUTTER /BONN

itler would not be amused. Indeed, the despotic Fuhrer, who prohibited any kind of satirically disrespectful treatment of himself and his policies, would be extremely annoyed if he read the contentious comic book, Adolf, the Nazi Pig, which is currently raising laughter, eyebrows and hackles in Germany.

Adolf, the latest creation of German cartoonist Walter Moers, 40, has sold more than 50,000 copies in two months and promises to be a best seller, to the surprise of both its author and its Frankfurt-based publisher, Eichborn. Favorable reviews of the adult comic have appeared in several prestigious publications which have never before deemed Moers' work noteworthy. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung even sees Adolf in the tradition of Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon novel Maus.

So what's the story? After spending the postwar years literally underground in some rat-infested city sewer, Hitler resurfaces one fine day in 1998. Still full of regret that he "should better have attacked Russia in the flank" and much bewildered by a multicultural world full of kebab signs and "Nazis Out" graffiti, he consults a mysterious shrink, Dr. Boil, who makes him travel the globe in search of diversion. In an attempt to make money as a prostitute, Adolf is beaten up by neo-Nazis, then takes a recuperative trip to Paris, where he signs on as a hotel chauffeur but soon crashes his royalty-filled limousine against a concrete tunnel support. Next, he is abducted by aliens, drops in on Hiroshima, and finally prevents a gung-ho Princess-Di-alias-Dr.-Boil from starting World War III.

At its best, the book is funny because of Moers' minimalistic style of caricature, the crazy plot, and the protagonist's idiosyncratic way of talking. Adolf dramatically rolls his r's and pathetically distorts his vowels. But the hitch is this: Adolf, the Nazi Pig is a farce--and nothing but. It never manages to do what the satirical comic art form should do. "It doesn't evoke a smile which freezes in the throat," says Michel Friedman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. "You can't laugh out loud about Hitler. There is nothing there to laugh about, only to cry, mourn, and think about." But loud guffaws, not a choking smile, are exactly what Moers' scrawny little dictator does evoke, mainly because the resemblance between cartoon and life is fleeting.

Moers neatly sidesteps his critics by invoking the cartoonist's right to artistic freedom. "In reality I made this book because Adolf Hitler is so easy to draw," he writes in the preface. Yet perhaps the triviality of Adolf, the Nazi Pig is also its strength. "The story has nothing which makes the rightist fringe happy, nothing that is anywhere near a positive view of Hitler and the Third Reich," comments Friedman. "It isn't politically incorrect." Whatever its worth as a satire, the great success of Moers' comic shows that many Germans feel the need for an unconventional, unacademic approach to Hitler and the country's Nazi past. It's just too bad that Adolf is all they get.