Atze

Atze (German: Pal) was a monthly comics magazine which was published from 1955 to 1991 in East Germany. It was the first comic publication in the country and was one of the state-controlled publications targeting youth.^[1]

Atze was established in 1955 as a sister publication of another magazine named Der Junge Pionier (German: The Young Scout), and its first issue appeared in April that year.^[2][3] Both magazines were edited by the same editorial team led by Klaus Hilbig for one year.^[2][4] Then Atze became part of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (German: Central Council of the Free German Youth) which was a youth movement controlled by the state until 1990.^[2] The publisher of the magazine was the Junge-Welt-Verlag, publishing company of the Freie Deutsche Jugend.^[2][4] Atze came out monthly and was first headquartered in Berlin and then in Dresden.^[4]

In the first year Atze was an eight-page publication.^[5] The magazine was redesigned in 1957, and its page number was extended to twelve.^[5] From 1962 its page number was sixteen.^[5]

Atze began to feature the comic series Fix and Fax by Jürgen Kieser in 1958.^[5][6] It also featured Pats Reiseabenteuer (German: Pat's Travel Adventures) which was started in 1967.^[4][3] One of its editors-in-chief was Wolfgang Altenburger who held the post from 1963 who had been a contributor of Atze.^[2] He introduced a new outline for the magazine.^[5] It included political editorials and comic series Pats Reiseabenteuer and Fix and Fax.^[5] This outline was employed without any significant change until the closure of Atze in 1991 due to its lower market share.^[5]

Wolfgang Altenburger did not only introduce an outline for Atze, but also made the magazine much more political in 1967 through anti-western, nationalist and socialist content in order to encourage socialist ideology among East German youth.^[3][7]

During its lifetime Atze produced a total of 442 issues and featured 1,686 comic stories.^[8] The magazine had a constant circulation of 450,000 copies.^[2]