The Life and Works of Erich Kaestner
The Famous German Writer Penned "Emil and the Detectives"
Oct 19, 2009
Erich Kaestner devoted nearly all of his professional life to writing and promoting literature in Germany. Although his body of work spans multiple genres--newswriting, satire, poetry, drama, fiction and children's literature--his book Emil and the Detectives, published in 1929, is his most popular work and remains a favorite in Germany.
Erich Kaestner's Early Life and Family
Erich Emil Kaestner was born in 1899 in Dresden, Germany, the only child of Emil Kaestner, a saddle maker, and Ida Kaestner, a hairdresser.
At the age of 14, he attended a training school with the intention of becoming a teacher, but his studies were interrupted in 1917 when he was drafted into the army for service in World War I. At the end of the war in 1918, he continued his schooling, graduating from the German equivalent of high school in 1919. He entered the University of Leipzig that year, where he concentrated in German language and literature, history, philsophy and theatre studies. He earned a PhD in 1925.
While Kaestner never married, he met his life-long partner, Luiselotte Enderle, in 1927. Thomas Kaestner, his son with Friedel Siebert, was born in 1957, and grew up with his mother in Berlin while Erich Kaestner remained in Munich.
Early Writing Career of Erich Kaestner
While still a university student, Kaestner began working as a journalist with the New Leipzig Times (Neue Leipziger Zeitung). He moved to Berlin in 1927 and worked as a freelance journalist, theater critic and writer for cabarets. His first books of poetry, Herz auf Taille and Laerm im Spiegel, appeared in 1928 and 1929, respectively.
He published his first children's novel, Emil and the Detectives, also in 1929. This engaging novel, about a boy whose money is stolen on a train en route to Berlin and who enlists the help of a group of Berlin children in a hunt to find the thief, was an instant success. The book has been translated in 24 languages and produced as a movie several times. Kaestner also published three other children's books between 1931 and 1933.
By the early 1930's, Kaestner was a well-known and popular literary figure. His first novel for adults, Fabian, The Story of a Moralist, came out in 1931. It is considered one of the best satires of German culture at the end of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the National Socialism (Nazi) movement.
Nazi Ban Against Erich Kaestner, 1933 to 1945
In 1933, the Nazi regime began burning books via public demonstrations of contemporary authors considered unacceptable in the New Order. These included works by, among many others, Kaestner, Thomas Mann and Berthold Brecht.
Kaestner was forbidden to publish until the end of the World War II. He was arrested and questioned several times between 1933 and 1940 by the Gestapo but was always released. He published various works, however, including the novel Three Men in Snow (1934), in Switzerland.
Erich Kaestner's Life After World War II
At the end of the war, Kaestner moved to Munich and became magazine editor of the New Times (Neue Zeitung). A year later, he founded Pinguin, a magazine for children. He was also president of the German branch of PEN, an international organization of writers, from 1951 to 1962.
He continued to write into the 1960s, notably, the children's book The Double Lottie, and The School of Dictators, a play. The Double Lottie was the inspiration for Walt Disney's film, The Parent Trap.
Kaestner was awarded numerous literary prizes in the last 2 decades of his life, including the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, in 1960. He died of cancer in Munich on July 29, 1974.
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