He is the most popular for-nothing in the world: For 80 years Donald Duck impressed generations of children – with his tireless struggle against capitalists, dictators and Gladstone Gander. Time to say thank you. A love letter to a duck.

Since your bold idea 65 years have passed, but in wit and exemplary character you’ve lost no beak length. Millions of children have grown up with you and now am old, you’re occurred in hundreds of films and become a Hollywood star. Countless books with your wisdom I landed at flea markets, adored you in thousands of comic book reading sessions, and not only me, no, no one today would keep you still just a cleverly marketed drawing. You are already a global figure of identification. An explanation of the world model with rump and sailor jacket. In short: our favorite duck.

In this case, your first steps were in the summer of 1934, far from earth-shattering. In the Disney cartoon “The Wise Little Hen” which you made known on that June 9 in the U.S., you had only a modest supporting role – as a lazy tyrant. But the age of three started your solo career in its own cartoon series: as a failure, as unlucky as for-nothing. And therefore, as a hero of everyday life, the right was awarded in 2004 a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Probably a delayed gratification for you after the years of hostility.

Because we Germans were not always nice to you doctors, educators and psychologists declared comics in the fifties to the dangerous “opium of the nursery,” the engine of youth neglect, as a threat to morality and decency. Groan. All along, you were there for me since my first Donald Duck magazine always exactly the opposite: You had to against the malevolence in the form of neighboring anger gable and against the monopoly capitalism of Uncle Scrooge fight which bathed thalers in his eleven Oktillionen and work up for himself was . Since the forties you’ve tried more than a hundred different professions alone in the comics of the great cartoonist Carl Barks – and you still never worked up from the low-wage sector.

But still: It is this pathetic hopeless struggle against the odds in the world that makes you so likeable since 1934. How many times I have the misfortune of desperate that you regularly struck how often I have solidarity me to own setbacks in the playground and the football field with you. While snobbish rednecks like Gladstone Gander speech bubbles lost lounged by the Duckburg everyday life, you have brought the tragedy of your destiny to the point: “. Nothingness as an economic miracle and the economic miracle men, wherever one looks Nevertheless, one must wegkehren the grime accumulated there” The Under Donald Duck against the excesses of consumerism and capitalism: a fight that you could never win.

Nevertheless, you have often proved enough courage: In May 1942, began about your commitment to the fight against Hitler. Elaborate color films exhibited in the United States, such as Donald Duck logs for the U.S. Army (“Donald Gets Drafted”), this is precisely these indebted boobies advertises for paying the taxes in time of war (“The Spirit of ’43”), as the Loser against the German Nazi dictator mood makes (“The Fuehrer’s Face”): Millions watched as you Nazi horror in “Nutzi country” durchlebtest in a dream. In the end, Hitler flew a tomato in the face and you were the star of the Western democracies.

It was one of your rare political appearances. Actually you can about the role of the gooder yes dear Mickey Mouse – and lets your own daredevil half maximum at night come to light: as a superhero with the code name “Phantomias”.

So You roars since 1969 in superhero costume at night by Duckburg in order to assist as Robin Hood drake in your bright red 313er small car the disenfranchised. Deep Secretly, of course, no one knows the identity behind the bold savior. The more I enjoyed it secretly to follow up late at night your adventures in my comic books and you inwardly cheer because you constantly for your situation highly unusual succeeded: You were successful, courageous, sympathetic and fair. The interest in the lovable

Everyman Donald has long reached academic dimensions: more – This most fans reaches your role as everyday loser actually.

Because even in the seventies was formed a movement that wanted you even closer on plumage: In the DONALD, the “German organization of non-commercial supporters of fair Donaldismus”, since then collects an international fan base – especially in Northern Europe and Germany. By investigating these bold enterprising scientists, we now know almost everything about you: Why are so rarely to see your teeth if you have sex exactly where your house is located in Duckburg. I already pubertierte when I learned from the shrill buzz of Donaldisten, and I was just as electrifying as they. Because we want to understand you, dear Donald – to understand ourselves.

Easy You have not exactly made us: Quasi never one learns something about your origin, rather than with his wife and children you live together with your nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie – and even your girlfriend Daisy capricious You let out regularly by cousin Gladstone Gander relax .

And yet we love you. Because even on your 80th birthday is your aged rump still full of feathers, the sailor’s cap sits usual gallant, and the red bow tie on blue jacket lights perky as ever. Worlds Greatest Drake, to and for your birthday a hearty clap, clap, clap!

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