Maya the Bee, the children’s heroine. The round yellow and black striped creature floats peacefully over meadows and ponds, hopping from nectar to nectar – always with a growl in its stomach. Maja is hungry, she wants the honey and the answers to the wonders of life. Its creator: the German writer Waldemar Bonsels, about whom there is little nice to say despite his seemingly idyllic, child-friendly stories. The facts about the cute Maya the Bee.
The story of Maya the Bee was invented by school dropout Waldemar Bonsels, who used it to process his childhood experiences in nature. His book “Maya the Bee and her Adventures”, published in 1912, became a bestseller after some initial difficulties: over 2 million German-language copies have been sold to date. The book has been translated into over 40 languages.
Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, Waldemar Bonsels went public with a pamphlet that spoke of the “great war that means Germany’s salvation and future”. The natural scientist Karl Daumer believes that Bonsels’ bee colony stories contain social Darwinist, racist tendencies.
After the Biene-Maja series was canceled after one year in September 1977, 40,000 letters were sent to ZDF asking for a repeat. The series was rebroadcast from October 1978 and a second season of 52 episodes was produced. New Maya the Bee episodes are to be broadcast in 3D on ZDF next year.
While the voice of Maya the Bee is spoken by an 11-year-old girl, Scarlet Cadaventi, in the German TV version, the voice of Willi, who has a weak voice, was spoken by dialog writer Eberhard Storeck himself. He had failed in his search for a suitable child.
How sexy Maya the Bee is is debatable, but her illustrator, Marty Murphy, played a decisive role in shaping Playboy’s cartoon style. From 1963 to 2009, around 348 of his drawings appeared in Playboy.
The TV series is a multicultural production – the story is German, the characters are designed by Americans, the series is produced in Japan – and is shown in over 140 countries.
The Maya bee belongs to the honeybee family and even though it is celebrating its 111th birthday this late summer, it is still a very popular species. summer, honey bees rarely survive one of them.
To simulate the sound of bees flying for the TV series, the sounds of a small electric motor were recorded and played back.
In addition to his bee adventures, Waldemar Bonsels also wrote erotic stories about deviant sexual practices. Most of them were burned in 1933.
Maja is full of zest for action, whereas her best friend Willi is a lazy fellow, as you can see from his half-smart look. But wrongly, Willi is wise and likes to say things like “every black cloud has a golden edge” and “two friends are worth more than ten pollen dumplings”.
Karel Gott, the golden voice of Prague, celebrated his biggest German-language hit with “Maya the Bee”. He was awarded five gold records for the title song, but he hardly earned anything from it. God was only paid for half an hour of singing. The reason: no contractual regulation.
Maya the Bee and Willi live on the poppy meadow. The meadow staff also consists of: Thekla, the spider, Flip, the grasshopper, Puck, the housefly, Helene VIII, the queen bee, Alois Siebenpunkt, the ladybug, Hieronymus, the millipede, Schnuck, the dragonfly, and many more.
Willis’ “Majaaa, wait for me, don’t fly so fast!” is the most frequently uttered sentence in the TV series.
Photo: picture alliance / United Archives
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