Hergé, creator of Tintin, racist and anti-Semite?

George Prosper Remi, better known as Hergé, was the creator of one of the best-known strip cartoon figures, Tintin (Kuifje). Titles of his early work about the adventures of the boy reporter and his dog Snowy (Milou) included Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America. These were described as conservative propaganda for children.

So how racist was Hergé? Following the German occupation of Belgium in 1940, the conservative Catholic newspaper where he worked was closed down. Hergé continued his Tintin series in Le Soir, a paper now controlled by the Nazi administration.

After the liberation of Belgium in 1944, the newspaper and its staff, including Hergé, were accused of having been collaborators. However, no real charges were ever brought against him even though he faced accusations of having been a traitor and collaborator for many years after. He was arrested four times but only spent one night in jail. The SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) issued a proclamation saying that “any journalist who had helped produce a newspaper during the occupation was for the time being barred from practising his profession”. A pro-Belgian resistance newspaper even issued a satirical strip titled The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Nazis. A subsequent investigation into Hergé’s concluded that Hergé had been “a blunderer rather than a traitor”.

The villain Rastapopoulus was initially depicted as a stereotype Jew but was later changed to a Greek capitalist. Also the original books such as Tintin in the Congo are very much of their time. Portraying Africans as childish and gullible was the prevailing attitude of Belgium at that time. Basically, Hergé seems to have changed his original views lambasting Jews, Africans, Native Americans and the Chinese into a more sensitive and culturally aware attitude.

Hergé died at the age of 75 in 1983. The Hergé museum in Louvain-la-Neuve contains eight displays of original artwork by Hergé.

Ann E.