Doctor Krollspell The Corrupt Doctor – Figurines Tintin La Collection Officielle – 104 – Le Docteur Krollspell Médecin Dévoyé

Author: Hergé & Editions Moulinsart
Price: £120.00
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.

Doctor Krollspell: A Short Biography

Doctor Krollspell is a secondary but pivotal antagonist in Flight 714 to Sydney (Vol 714 pour Sydney, 1968). He is introduced as a brilliant German scientist working for the billionaire industrialist Laszlo Carreidas, but the story quickly reveals his shadowy past and moral ambiguity. Krollspell represents a type that recurs in Hergé’s later works — the intellectual corrupted by power, yet not entirely devoid of conscience. Through him, Hergé explores the uneasy relationship between science, ethics, and coercion — a theme that had become especially resonant in the decades following the Second World War.

Character Overview

Context and Origins

Flight 714 to Sydney was one of Hergé’s later Tintin stories, written at a time when the author was increasingly preoccupied with psychology, morality, and modern anxieties about technology and control.

Doctor Krollspell is introduced as a nervous, balding scientist, whose name evokes Germanic origins — Kroll (meaning “curl” or “rage”) and spell (suggesting manipulation or hypnosis). His background hints at a former involvement with wartime or post-war experimentation, an allusion that would have been immediately recognisable to contemporary readers in the 1960s. When Krollspell reappears in the service of Rastapopoulos — the perennial symbol of greed and criminal enterprise — it is clear that Hergé intended him as a morally ambiguous survivor of darker times, a man whose intellect has been co-opted by power.

Characterisation

Doctor Krollspell is drawn as a timid, nervous man, physically unimposing and emotionally fragile. He is not a sadist or a megalomaniac, but rather a scientist who has surrendered his moral agency to others. Hergé portrays him with psychological realism rather than caricature. Krollspell’s fear and submission suggest a man who has lived too long under coercion — first under political tyranny, later under criminal manipulation.

Key Traits

• Submissive: Easily intimidated by stronger personalities, particularly Rastapopoulos.
• Clever: A skilled scientist with advanced knowledge of hypnosis and memory manipulation.
• Fearful: His anxiety governs every decision he makes.
• Morally Weak: Not evil by conviction, but by surrender.

He exemplifies what Hannah Arendt termed “the banality of evil” — the ordinary man who collaborates with wrongdoing because he lacks the courage to resist.

Narrative Role in Flight 714 to Sydney

Doctor Krollspell serves as the scientific instrument of Rastapopoulos’s plot. The villain has kidnapped the eccentric millionaire Laszlo Carreidas in order to extract the code to his Swiss bank accounts, using Krollspell’s invention — a form of hypnotic truth serum — to force a confession.

Krollspell thus occupies a dual role:

• Scientist as torturer: His technology enables psychological coercion.
• Scientist as victim: He himself is terrified of the criminals who employ him.

When Tintin and his friends intervene, Krollspell is clearly relieved. His interactions with Tintin and Haddock suggest that he despises Rastapopoulos but lacks the strength to oppose him.
Eventually, during the chaos of the story’s climax, Krollspell is abducted by extraterrestrial forces along with the others, a mysterious ending that leaves his ultimate fate ambiguous.

Symbolic and Moral Dimensions

In this sense, Krollspell belongs to Hergé’s more psychologically nuanced phase, where villains are no longer one-dimensional but haunted by guilt, weakness, and the weight of their pasts.

Artistic Depiction

Hergé’s visual treatment of Krollspell is meticulous:

• Appearance: Balding, bespectacled, with a neat moustache — the stereotype of a nervous academic.
• Body Language: Shrinking posture, hesitant gestures, and darting eyes convey fear and subservience.
• Clothing: Always in a laboratory coat or conservative suit, emphasising conformity and restraint.

The restrained ligne claire style heightens the realism: Krollspell is no grotesque caricature, but a believable human being — an unsettlingly ordinary collaborator in a world of moral crisis.

Relationship with Rastapopoulos

Rastapopoulos and Krollspell embody two halves of modern evil:

• Rastapopoulos: The will to power, greed, and domination.
• Krollspell: The intellect that serves such will without ethical reflection.

Where Rastapopoulos manipulates, Krollspell executes; where one is bold, the other is fearful. Their partnership exposes how knowledge can be corrupted by ambition, and how the scientist, when detached from moral purpose, becomes an agent of oppression rather than enlightenment.

Comparison with Other Scientific Figures in Hergé’s Work

Krollspell lies between these two poles. Unlike Müller, he lacks ideological motivation; unlike Calculus, he lacks moral integrity.
He is a man of intellect but no courage, a portrait of what happens when reason is separated from conscience.

Thematic Legacy and Interpretation

Hergé’s portrayal of Doctor Krollspell reflects his own evolving worldview in the late 1960s. By then, The Adventures of Tintin had moved beyond adventure and satire to address deeper moral and psychological concerns. Krollspell embodies the ethical dilemmas of modernity — the responsibility of scientists in a world still shadowed by fascism, the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear destruction. His inclusion in Flight 714 to Sydney demonstrates Hergé’s growing interest in ambiguity and redemption, replacing the clear moral binaries of his earlier work with figures shaped by fear, compromise, and the possibility of forgiveness.

Summary

Conclusion

Doctor Krollspell is one of Hergé’s most sophisticated portrayals of moral ambiguity. Neither wholly villain nor victim, he represents the ordinary collaborator — the intelligent man who allows himself to be used by evil because he fears resistance more than guilt. Through Krollspell, Hergé confronts the uneasy legacy of 20th-century science — its brilliance, its potential for abuse, and its dependence on the conscience of those who wield it.
In doing so, he moves Tintin’s world decisively into the moral and psychological terrain of modernity, where even intellect can become a form of cowardice when divorced from human decency.

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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.