In summer of 1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Sudeten Germans Hans-Fred and Gerda Handl came to Vienna from Bohemia. After living in their new homeland for only a few months, the couple started to publish the first Austrian post-war children's magazine, called "Die Kinderpost". The pilot was issued in December 1945, the regular bimonthly publication started in January 1946.

“Die Kinderpost” featured short stories, interesting news from all over the world, puzzles, descriptions of spare-time activities and various comic strip pages. Defying post-war paper-shortages, the "Kinderpost" became a huge success, being able to produce up to 250,000 copies per issue.

Sometime between 1948 and 1949, the "Kinderpost" received an offer to publish "Mickey Mouse" but Hans-Fred Handl declined the offer. He felt committed to the German cultural and language heritage and wanted to avoid American influence.

Due to financial troubles, Hans-Fred Handl had to sell the "Kinderpost" to the "Wiener Verlagshaus" (Viennese Publisher) in late 1948. It seems that the new publisher didn't have very strong misgivings towards American influence since they issued a 23-part series of "Prince Valiant", called Prinz Eisenherz (Prince Ironheart) in German translations, in 1950.

The Fifties had been very good decade for Tarzan in Germany. Pegasus of Wetzlar/Germany had started publishing a quite successful series of Tarzan books in 1950 and the Mondial/Pabel ongoing series of Tarzan comics had very good sales.

It can be assumed (even though there is no real proof for this assumption) that the publishers of the "Kinderpost" wanted to increase sales by jumping on the Tarzan-bandwagon.

Issue 7, released on April 7th, 1956 featured a unique cover showing Tarzan, surrounded by  various animals. Why the artist choose to include a lion, an animal that does not appear in the original story, can only be guessed.

On the lower right-hand corner of the title page a red box announces the new series: "Tarzan Bildstreifen-Roman; Erscheint jedes 2. Heft (ungerade Nummern)". This translates as "Tarzan Picture Strip Novel" and appears every 2nd issue (odd numbers).

The following issues feature Tarzan:

1956: 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 26. All 1956 volumes have a small box in the upper left-hand corner stating "Tarzan-Heft" - ("Tarzan-issue").
This box is omitted on all 1957 issues.
On # 25 a box states "Kein Tarzan-Heft dies-mal, erst Heft 26" ("No Tarzan issue this time, not until issue 26").

1957: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19

Tarzans Tiere, the Story

The adaptation of "Tarzans Tiere" is based on the German translation of E. R. Burroughs' novel, published by Pegasus-Verlag in 1951.

The book has been translated by Tony Kellen, originally for the 1924 edition, published by Karl Dieck.

Fritz Albrecht is the artist for all 20 parts of the story and most probably he has also done the cover for the first Tarzan issue. The adaptation for the first installment is by Emil Hübl, all other editing of the story has been done by Wolfgang Troll-Obergfell.

It seems like Albrecht and Troll-Obergfell have been an in-house team for comic adaptations. Between April 1956 and September 1957, two other comic stories have been drawn and written by these two men ("He Discovered America With Christoph Columbus", the story of a cabin boy on board of the Santa Maria and an adaptation of "Robinson Crusoe").

In addition to his work on these stories, Fritz Albrecht provided occasional illustrations for serialized novels. Here are two examples of them: