Adam Dean looks at the life of Tintin creator Hergé under German
occupation, and the accusations that he was a Nazi collaborator.
As a boy, Tintin was my hero. I spent
named Totor. At the age of 18 he became an
many hours happily absorbed in his brightly-
illustrator on a Catholic newspaper called Le
coloured world, along with his gallery of loyal
Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century).
friends and scheming villains, sharing his fantastic
Before long he was asked to create a new strip
adventures. I knew nothing about his creator, who
cartoon for the children’s supplement to the paper,
had the mysterious single name of Hergé. So I was
Le Petit Vingtième. So the scout Totor became the
shocked to find, when reading a recent biography of
intrepid young reporter Tintin, who embarked on a
Hergé, that he was once suspected of being a Nazi
series of famous adventures. Originally appearing
collaborator.
as a daily comic-strip, these were later published in
The young Belgian artist named Georges Rémi
used his initials, reversed in the French alphabet, to
book-form, achieving massive popularity.
Hergé was already an acclaimed figure when
make the pseudonym Hergé. He was born in
the threat of Fascism loomed across the world in the
Brussels in 1907. He became an enthusiastic
1930’s. He responded in a way that showed his
Boy Scout – his first attempt at a cartoon story
clear anti-Fascist stand. The Blue Lotus appeared in
appeared in a scouting magazine, featuring a hero
1934, dealing with the threat posed to China by