Hugo Hercules and The Wild West - The Artist W.H.D. Koerner (Deutsch)(2023)

Together with graphic designer Tim Eckhorst, filmmaker Martina Fluck goes in search of traces of the important German-American comic pioneer, illustrator and Western painter W.H.D. Koerner, who was born in Schleswig-Holstein in 1878 and emigrated to the USA with his family in 1881. In 1902, W.H.D. Koerner created the first superhero "Hugo Hercules" in Chicago. At the same time, he began his career as an illustrator for important contemporary novels and discovered his love of the "Wild West". Around 2,000 of his oil paintings are published as illustrations in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and books. He became an important illustrator and painter of the Western genre. To this day, his paintings characterise the global visual memory of the so-called "Wild West", as they also serve as models for the sets and costumes of the first Hollywood western films.