Of all the illustrated stories published during the Third Reich, only one has remained in the memory of German readers to this day: O.E. Plauen‘s (pen name of Erich Ohser) apolitical one-pagers Father and Son. O.E. Plauen, who often illustrated for social democratic newspapers during the Weimar Republic (including a cartoon in which a drunken man relieves himself, drawing a swastika in the snow), was banned from working under the Reich. It was only through the intercession of Erich Kästner, who at times had to work under a pseudonym himself, that he was given the opportunity to draw his wordless stories, which tell of the amusing everyday adventures of a boy and his father. Father and Son was a great success right from the start, with a first anthology selling 90,000 copies in a short space of time. But the sensitive Plauen could never resign himself to working for the regime he hated, even if it was in order to survive. In his private life he often told political jokes, which was to be his undoing in March 1944. Accused of defaming Goebbels and Himmler, O.E. Plauen committed suicide the morning before his first day of trial.