Enlarge image More than 250 of the original graphics, drafts and text dialogues will be on display. (© picture alliance / dpa) The legendary graphic novel “Maus” and the other works from American illustrator Art Spiegelman are to be presented in the first Germany-wide retrospective at Cologne’s Museum Ludwig. More than 250 of the original graphics, drafts and text dialogues from the Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator are to be part of a display, which focuses on the author’s work in “Maus,” in which he discusses the fate of his Jewish parents during the Holocaust in a graphic novel.

His parents were interned at the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps – and survived. In order to make a very difficult topic accessible for young readers, Spiegelman depicted the Jews as mice and the Germans as cats. Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his effort and is to be honored with the Siegfried Unself prize this Sunday in Berlin. “Art Spiegelman Co-Mix – a Retrospective of Comics, Drawings and Other Scribbles” can be seen through January 6, 2013.

Enlarge image Museum Ludwig in Cologne will host the retrospective. (© picture alliance / Oliver Berg) The exhibition starts at the very beginning, back when the now 64-year-old artist began working on trading cards and decals at a chewing gum manufacturer as a teenager. Spiegelman wrote his first satirical magazine at the tender age of 15, making the comics the polar opposite of “Mickey Mouse” – which may explain why he never sold anything to Hollywood, the museum’s director, Kasper König, said on Friday.

In the 1970s, Spiegelman was a member of the well-established “Underground Comix Scene,” and he brought his ideas with him while working at various magazines, including the New Yorker. As a resident of New York City, Spiegelman cataloged his experience of 9/11 in the book “In the Shadow of No Towers,” which was printed by the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit in 2003.