Otfried Preußler

Otfried Preußler (pronounced [ˈɔtfʁiːt ˈpʁɔʏslɐ] ; sometimes spelled Preussler; born Otfried Syrowatka; 20 October 1923 – 18 February 2013) was a German children's books author. More than 50 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide and they have been translated into 55 languages. His best-known works are The Robber Hotzenplotz and The Satanic Mill (Krabat).

Life and work

He was born in Liberec, Czechoslovakia. His mother Erna Syrowatka, née Tscherwenka, and his father Josef Syrowatka were both teachers. They changed their family name from the Czech Syrowatka to the German Preußler in 1941 during the Nazi occupation of the country. After he graduated school in 1942, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted into the German Army. Although he survived the military action on the Eastern Front, he was taken prisoner as a 21-year-old lieutenant in 1944. He spent the next five years in various POW camps in the Tatar Republic.

After his release in June 1949, he found his displaced relatives and his fiancée, Annelies Kind in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim. They married that same year.

Between 1953 and 1970, he was initially a primary school teacher, then a school principal in Rosenheim. There his talents as a storyteller and illustrator were put to good use, and often the stories he told the children would later be written down and published.

He won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1972 for Krabat.

Preußler resided in Haidholzen, near Rosenheim.

Over 15.2 million copies of his books have been sold in the German language, and his works have been translated into over 55 other languages.