With over 220 episodes and more than 70 million books and audio recordings sold, the cult series “Die Drei ???” is Germany’s most successful detective series. The series’ success in German-speaking countries is closely linked to the artist and illustrator Aiga Rasch (1941–2009), who created the book series’ cover design, which remains unmistakable to this day.
The exhibition at the Altonaer Museum will examine the life and extensive body of work of Aiga Rasch from various perspectives. First, visitors will see how Rasch’s distinctive cover style evolved. Drawing from her estate, the exhibition features illustrations from different creative phases, traces key influences, and ultimately highlights the innovation of her visual language. As early as the mid-1960s, Aiga Rasch created illustrations for the Nancy Drew detective stories. With her designs for “The Three Investigators” starting in 1969, she embarked on a completely new path, one that, due to its particular success, also shaped later detective series, such as those based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes or “Alfred Hitchcock’s Thriller” . These works not only reveal the diversity of different body of work (from book covers to children’s book illustrations to caricatures), but also, through numerous preliminary sketches and sketchbooks, the visual “making-of” of Rasch’s approach to the detective stories.
Another key aspect will be Aiga Rasch’s connection to Hamburg and Altona. It wasn’t just the famous cover designs that contributed to the worldwide success of the “Die drei ???” book series and the Sherlock Holmes stories. Aiga Rasch’s trail leads to Hamburg through the radio plays produced by director Heikedine Körting for the Europa label since 1979. The exhibition will offer insights into the soundscapes of radio drama production and invite visitors to create their own sound compositions.
Finally, the exhibition explores the role Aiga Rasch’s illustrations play in the enduring hype surrounding the detective stories, whose contemporary media mix has turned “Die Drei ???” into a pop-cultural phenomenon. This phenomenon made the famous detectives a fixture in bookstores, not least due to the iconic cover design, shaped a generation of “cassette kids,” and is discussed today on social media platforms, in podcasts, and on blogs.
