📖 Wenn Geschichte nicht vergeht 📖
Mit der Graphic Novel "Replay – Erinnerungen einer entwurzelten Familie" erzählt @jmechner , bekannt als Schöpfer von Prince of Persia, eine persönliche Geschichte von Flucht, Verlust und Neuanfang.
Eine Erzählung, die zeigt, wie Vergangenheit weiterwirkt - in Erinnerungen, in Familien, in unserer Gegenwart.
#VermesVerlag #Buchtipp #GraphicNovel #Replay #PrinceOfPersia #Erinnerung #Geschichte #Neuanfang
Voici l’impression, étape par étape, d’une gravure de l’artiste Jordan Mechner, dont l’édition sera très bientôt disponible. @jmechner Gravure réalisée d’après les rotoscopies utilisées lors de la création de Prince of Persia, capturant le mouvement à l’origine des animations des personnages du jeu vidéo.
Here is the step-by-step printing process of an engraving by the artist Jordan Mechner, whose edition will be available very soon. This engraving is based on the rotoscoping used during the creation of Prince of Persia, capturing the movement behind the animations of the video game’s characters. #princeofpersia #etching #retrogaming #rotoscoping #fondationmaeght
My dad and his aunt Lisa often told me about a Luftwaffe pilot named Willi--how a chance encounter at the tobacco shop where Lisa worked, in 1940 occupied France, led to them becoming friends. And how that friendship--though Willi never knew it--probably saved their lives.
This story fascinated me: A German Nazi officer in wartime, befriending a pair of Austrian Jewish refugees?
To depict the episode in my graphic novel “REPLAY”, I asked my dad tons of questions. (He's now 94, still sharp.) Then, I did additional research. Although my dad's memories of Willi are vivid, being a 9-year-old kid at the time, he didn't know details like his rank, last name, or birthplace. I emailed Erik Mombeeck, who maintains a website dedicated to Luftwaffe pilots missing in action and their families.
I would have considered myself lucky to receive a few photo references of Luftwaffe officers and pilots with similar profiles to Willi's. To my amazement, Erik searched the records of pilots stationed in Le Touquet at that time and found exactly one matching my dad's description: Oberleutnant Willi Hopp, Stab III./JG 3, born 14 February 1915 in Hamburg, shot down southeast of Folkestone on 23 September 1940. All the details fit-- his first name, birthplace, being married with a young daughter, where he was stationed and the week he disappeared.
My dad was overwhelmed when I showed him the scans of death cards Erik sent me. (The last image in carousel.) It meant a lot to him, after more than eighty years, to have one of his strongest childhood memories corroborated with concrete evidence.
My graphic novel family memoir Replay (spanning four Mechner generations, from World Wars I and II to my own childhood and youth making video games), is now available in English, French, German, Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. Info at jordanmechner.com/replay (link in bio).
In 1940, in the French seaside town of Le Touquet under German occupation, my dad’s aunt Lisa got a job working behind the counter in a tobacco shop.
My dad was 9 years old. He often told me the story of their unlikely—and to me, touching and heartbreaking—friendship with a German Luftwaffe officer pilot named Willi. I put it in my graphic novel memoir REPLAY. Here’s the beginning.
My dad’s stories about Willi moved me especially because it was so surprising to me, as an American kid, that a Nazi officer and two Austrian Jewish refugees could be friends. But of course it made sense—that these three young people with similar upbringings and a shared culture, displaced far from their homeland and in danger (in different ways) because of the Nazi regime, would find common ground.
The full story is in REPLAY (chapter 4), and its even more unlikely coda in chapter 6. For anyone curious to know more about the historical background and context (and the research I embarked on to check the accuracy of my dad’s childhood recollections), I’ve posted a note in the Replay Annex. You can find all at /replay (link in bio).
This little book by Amin Maalouf speaks to me so powerfully. His identity is French and Lebanese, mine is American and Austrian (living in France); his heritage is Christian, mine Jewish; but on nearly every page, I feel like he is speaking for me, with more clarity and insight, humanity and hopefulness, than I’ve ever been able to summon in my attempts to express myself on the subject.
I read it first in French, just discovered it exists in English, and am rereading it now. It’s brilliant in both languages. I recommend it to everyone, especially today. It directly addresses the issues much on my mind as I try to absorb each day’s harrowing world events.
The real heroine of my graphic novel family memoir "Replay" is my dad's young aunt Lisa Ziegler.
When my dad was separated from his parents in 1938 at age 7, Jewish refugees from Nazi Austria, Lisa kept him by her side in France. When Germany invaded France in May 1940, trapping them in a war zone, Lisa made protecting her nephew her first priority--for the next year and a half, as they moved from one town to another, staying one step ahead of the Gestapo and the French authorities.
My dad and Lisa got out in late 1941 thanks to a miracle wrought by my grandfather from across the Atlantic (the full story is in the book). Most of their extended family and friends who stayed in Europe were arrested, deported and murdered by 1942. Lisa's extraordinary resolve, courage, quick thinking, and good luck--and the friendship, love and loyalty she inspired in others--saved their lives time and again. If it weren't for Lisa, my dad wouldn't have made it past age ten. And I certainly wouldn't be here.
Today, my dad is 94--and still spry enough to sit down at the piano and play from memory the Prince of Persia music that he composed 37 years ago, in 1989.
Clément Oubrerie is gone. A wonderful artist and joyful spirit. One evening when he took out his guitar after dinner, I grabbed my sketchbook and scribbled this sketch—it was the closest he’d come to sitting still. An irrepressible, fast-moving ball of energy, zipping from one inspiration to the next, radiating fun to all around him.
Der amerikanische Autor und Game-Designer Jordan Mechner erzählt über seine neu erschienene Graphic Novel REPLAY und die Flucht seiner Familie aus Wien, Montag, 20:05 Uhr auf OKTO
Url: https://www.okto.tv/de/sendereihe/jukebox/video/69a586fe4eb8d/im-gesprach-jordan-mechner #wien #graphicnovel #replay #austria #princeofpersia #vermesverlag
I wish with all my heart peace, safety, freedom, and hope for Iranians in Iran and around the world. Throughout my life, I've been moved and inspired by the friendship, generosity, courage and resilience, creativity and culture of Iranian people. My thoughts are with you now.
My dad was 9 in May 1940, when German bombers attacked the seaside town where he and his young aunt Lisa were staying in Northern France (Le Touquet, near Dunkirk).
I try to imagine how his parents (my grandparents) must have felt, following the news in the newspapers and radio from Havana and New York, knowing their son was in a war zone. They'd sent him to France thinking he would be safer there than in Nazi-ruled Vienna, from which they'd fled as refugees. Instead, he got stuck there. For the next few months, his parents had no way even to know whether he and Lisa were still alive.
In my graphic novel memoir "Replay", I recount my dad, aunt and grandparents' odyssey as they told it to me-- interwoven with my own very different American childhood and life making video games, in which I never had to live under bombardment or under a regime that was trying to kill me.
