Bohlwinkel The Crooked Financier – Figurines Tintin La Collection Officielle – 90 – Bohlwinkel Le Financier Véreux

Author: Hergé & Editions Moulinsart
Price: £70.00
Publisher: Editions Moulinsart
Publication date: 2015
Format: Original pictorial boards with passport and figurine
Condition: In near fine condition
Illustrations: Illustrated throughout

Description:

Original pictorial boards. Includes passport loosely inserted. Text in French. Includes the accompanying figurine. One from the collection of 111 books and figurines. Very slight wear. In very near fine, clean condition overall.

Bohlwinkel: A Short Biography

Bohlwinkel is a key antagonist in The Adventures of Tintin – The Shooting Star (L’Étoile Mystérieuse, first published in 1942*). A powerful financier and industrial magnate, he operates behind the scenes as the banker funding the rival expedition to Tintin’s own. In the story’s moral framework, Bohlwinkel embodies greed, materialism, and the corruption of scientific integrity by economic power.

Although his role is limited to brief appearances and communications, his influence pervades the narrative. He is the architect of moral conflict — the man who turns discovery into competition and truth into commerce.

Character Overview

Narrative Role in The Shooting Star

1. The Rival Expedition

The story begins when Tintin and Professor Decimus Phostle discover a meteorite approaching Earth. When it crashes into the Arctic Ocean, it carries with it a new metal, phostlite, with potentially immense scientific and commercial value.

Two expeditions are organised:

• The European expedition, led by Tintin and financed by the Aurora Foundation, represents scientific curiosity and international cooperation.
• The rival expedition, secretly controlled by Bohlwinkel through his Banco in São Rico, represents greed and the ruthless pursuit of profit.

2. The Invisible Villain

Bohlwinkel never appears directly alongside Tintin. Instead, he is seen in his office or communication room, barking orders to his subordinates and manipulating events through wealth and influence.

He orders ships to block Tintin’s path, instructs radio operators to sabotage communications, and directs attempts to delay or destroy the Aurora’s progress. Hergé presents him as a shadowy puppet-master, whose reach spans nations and oceans — a metaphor for the unseen forces of money and power shaping global events.

3. His Downfall

Ultimately, despite his vast financial power, Bohlwinkel’s expedition is defeated. Tintin and Captain Haddock reach the meteorite first, and the banker’s schemes collapse. His defeat symbolises the failure of greed in the face of moral courage and human integrity — a classic Hergéan resolution where decency triumphs over corruption.

Characterisation

1. The Face of Greed

Bohlwinkel is drawn as a heavyset man with sharp, calculating features: a large nose, small eyes, and a permanent frown. Hergé’s artwork captures the idea of moral ugliness reflected in physical form, an artistic device rooted in caricature but handled with increasing sophistication as his career progressed.

2. Detached and Authoritarian

He operates entirely through intermediaries — giving orders, never acting directly. This distance from the world of physical risk or morality highlights his detachment from consequence. His world is one of ledgers, telegrams, and transactions.

3. Ruthless and Unethical

Bohlwinkel’s willingness to sabotage ships and endanger lives for profit reveals his amoral pragmatism. He is not a villain of passion or ideology, but of cold calculation — a man whose only loyalty is to money.

Themes and Symbolism

1. Science vs. Capital

Hergé uses Bohlwinkel to dramatise the conflict between pure scientific discovery and its commercial exploitation. While Tintin’s expedition is motivated by curiosity and progress, Bohlwinkel’s is motivated by greed and control.

This duality reflects a moral truth that runs throughout the Tintin series: that knowledge, uncorrupted, ennobles humanity, while greed corrupts it.

2. The Corruption of Modern Power

Bohlwinkel represents systemic evil rather than personal malice. He does not steal or fight; he manipulates and controls. In this way, he marks a turning point in Hergé’s conception of villainy — from the cartoonish gangsters of early adventures to the bureaucratic and institutional evil that defines the modern world.

3. The Invisible Hand

Through Bohlwinkel, Hergé visualises the “invisible hand” of global finance — a force that operates above nations, beyond ethics, and without humanity. The character’s São Rican nationality underscores this: he belongs to no real country, existing instead in the transnational world of capital.

Evolution and Controversy

1. The Blumenstein Controversy

When The Shooting Star was first published in 1942 in Nazi-occupied Belgium, the character was named Blumenstein, a recognisably Jewish name. Some critics later interpreted this as reflecting wartime antisemitic stereotypes of the greedy financier.

Hergé, however, later changed the name to “Bohlwinkel” and rewrote elements of the story for republication after the war, removing such implications. The change reflects his later commitment to moral clarity and universal critique, distancing the story from racial caricature and focusing instead on the corrupting nature of unchecked capitalism itself.

2. A Moral Evolution

By transforming Blumenstein into Bohlwinkel, Hergé elevated the character from a product of his time into a timeless symbol of moral decay. This act of self-correction exemplifies Hergé’s growing ethical awareness and his lifelong pursuit of truth and fairness — qualities that mark the maturity of The Adventures of Tintin.

Moral and Psychological Reading

1. The Faceless Villain of the Modern Age

Bohlwinkel embodies the shift from personal villains (pirates, smugglers, spies) to impersonal systems of control — the world of corporations, banks, and global influence. He is the invisible power behind events, never dirtying his hands, yet shaping destinies from afar.

2. Greed as a Dehumanising Force

His obsession with profit strips him of empathy, transforming him into a moral void. Hergé uses this to illustrate how money, when elevated above conscience, erodes humanity.

3. Order vs. Justice

Bohlwinkel’s world appears orderly and efficient — banks, telegrams, timetables — yet it is fundamentally unjust. In contrast, Tintin’s world is chaotic but moral. This contrast defines the story’s moral geometry.

Visual and Artistic Design

Bohlwinkel’s design reflects Hergé’s mastery of expressive minimalism:

• Features: Thick lips, small, intense eyes, and an imposing build convey arrogance and greed.
• Clothing: Always impeccably dressed — dark suit, tie, and polished shoes — symbolising external respectability masking inner corruption.
• Body Language: He looms over subordinates, gestures imperiously, and speaks in short, clipped commands — the perfect visual shorthand for authority without empathy.

Summary

Conclusion

Bohlwinkel stands as one of Hergé’s most complex villains — not because of his actions, but because of what he represents. He is the embodiment of greed without humanity, intellect without conscience, power without responsibility.

Through him, Hergé critiques not an individual but a system — the faceless, financial machine that places profit above principle. In Tintin’s moral universe, such men may rule nations and command empires, but they are destined to fall, undone by their own arrogance.

Bohlwinkel’s legacy endures as a reminder that evil need not shout or shoot; it can simply count, calculate, and corrupt quietly from behind a desk.

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Cataloguer: Daniel Hornsey

Daniel Hornsey has specialised in fine and rare books, ephemera, and collectors’ editions for over thirty years. As a long-standing member of the antiquarian book trade, he has advised private collectors, curated catalogues, and sourced works for leading dealers, libraries and institutions across the world.

Hornseys’ exhibit regularly at book and map fairs in London and throughout the UK and are members of the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association, the PBFA.

His fascination with Hergé’s work — especially ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ — began in childhood. Daniel recalls reading Tintin in original European editions and quickly recognising that these were not merely children’s books, but finely illustrated narratives crafted with artistic depth and wit.

As noted by the Musée Hergé in Louvain-la-Neuve, Hergé’s ‘ligne claire’ style has influenced generations of European comic artists and his original drawings and paintings command very high prices with his painting of ‘The Blue Lotus’ jar fetching £2.8m at auction in 2021.

By presenting these works through Hornseys’, he hopes to contribute to the continued appreciation of one of the 20th century’s most influential illustrators, helping new generations discover the artistry and legacy of Hergé.