Erich Kästner

Emil Erich Kästner (German: [ˈeːʁɪç ˈkɛstnɐ] ; 23 February 1899 – 29 July 1974) was a German writer, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known primarily for his humorous, socially astute poems and for children's books including Emil and the Detectives and Lisa and Lottie. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1960 for his autobiography When I Was a Little Boy. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in eight separate years.

Biography

Dresden (1899–1919)

Kästner was born in Dresden, Saxony, and grew up on Königsbrücker Straße in Dresden's Äußere Neustadt. Close by, the Erich Kästner Museum was subsequently opened in the Villa Augustin that had belonged to Kästner's uncle Franz Augustin.

Kästner's father, Emil Richard Kästner, was a master saddlemaker. His mother, Ida Amalia (née Augustin), had been a maidservant, but in her thirties she trained as a hairstylist in order to supplement her husband's income. Kästner had a particularly close relationship with his mother. When he was living in Leipzig and Berlin, he wrote her fairly intimate letters and postcards almost every day, and overbearing mothers made regular appearances in his writings. It has been rumored that Erich Kästner's natural father was the family's Jewish doctor, Emil Zimmermann (1864–1953), but these rumors have never been substantiated. Kästner wrote about his childhood in his autobiography Als ich ein kleiner Junge war (1957, translated as When I Was a Little Boy). According to Kästner, he did not suffer from being an only child, had many friends, and was not lonely or overindulged.