Asterix und die Goten by René GoscinnyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
As a kid, I grew up with Asterix, having discovered him when we moved to Italy in 1975. Asterix and the Goths was one of my absolute favorites. They're all great, but there was something about all the factional infighting among the various tribes of Goths that I found hilarious.
Fast forward to 2019, when my wife and I take a long-anticipated trip to Europe. A large part of that time was spent in Austria, with a couple of days in Germany (Frankfurt and Munich). We stopped in multiple bookstores, including a comic book store in Vienna and a used bookstore in Munich. I was specifically looking for this Asterix book auf Deutsch, but I could not for the life of me find it. Several stores had ALL of the Asterix books in German, except this one. Then I remembered that one of the speech bubbles had a Goth chieftain, who had just been thumped on the head with a club, swearing up a long string of explicatives (I thought of my German-swearing grandmother when I saw this). The swear words were represented by lots of different symbols, including (gasp) a swastika.
Then it dawned on me: the book had been banned because it has a Nazi symbol in it.
Germany, Austria, I love you, but . . . seriously? I'm all about punching nazis, but really?
Anyway, I eventually found a copy . . . on Ebay. I bought it right up because who knows how many of these will survive?
It's kind of strange how things turn. Banning books, in particular . . .
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