Ossikar is asteroid #59828 and also known as 1999 RU32. Ossikar is a quite boring asteroid of the Hirayama-family Agnia. Ossikar really seems not to exhibit any peculiarity. Ossikar was discovered by the German physics teacher and amateur astronomer Gerhard Lehmann at the Drebach People’s Observatory (Volkssternwarte Drebach). He discovered several asteroids there.

Ossikar is named after a cartoon-figure, that was created by the German caricaturist Manfred Sondermann, who is the father-in-law of the asteroid discoverer Gerhard Lehmann. The German part of the Wikipedia knows more on Manfred Sondermann than on Gerhard Lehmann. So figuring out something on Ossikar should be an easy task for me. But this proves to be not this way. According to the official naming citation of the asteroid, the cartoon-figure should be the main hero of many caricatures, which appeared in numerous magazines plus a book. Ossikar should be famous at least in Germany then. But I never before encountered this name. Manfred Sondermann was born in Berlin and lived in the German Democratic Republic. He there was an engineer, made technical illustrations, and as an amateur drew some caricatures with robots. He paid special attention to drawing only caricatures of robots, that would be fully functional. After the German Democratic Republic got absorbed by the Federal Republic of Germany, Manfred Sondermann became a political caricaturist and invented Ossikar. The according caricatures shall have appeared from 1991 until 2006, but only in the newspapers Frankenpost and Thüringenpost. The latter either doesn’t exist anymore or never went online. Frankenpost has an online edition, but seemingly without an archive. I really don’t find any caricature featuring Ossikar!

But I’m able to analyze the name. Ossikar is a combination of the name Oskar and the colloquial German expression Ossi, which denotes any person, who grew up in the German Democratic Republic or at least knows it personally from living there. The opposite is any person, who at the same time grew up in the Federal Republic of Germany and hence is called a Wessi. The division of Germany resulted in some cultural differences. This led to the creation of many jokes, most of them at the expense of the socialist country. The name Oskar seems to be only chosen for the reason that it can easily be combined with the term Ossi. Because Manfred Sondermann became a political caricaturist, when the German Democratic Republic ended, so he could make jokes at the expense of the German Democratic Republic without fearing punishment. He probably had to hold himself back previously because he had to fear punishment if he made jokes at the expense of the socialist country, while he was living in it. So the astrological force Ossikar represents a person, who gets ridiculed. Ossikar is the target of jokes.