I have been using my habitual method of exploiting the closest language I already know as a stepping stone. There is, to say the least, ample room left for improvement but based on previous experience with learning languages, I think I've now reached the point where I can continue to progress by just reading more books. And, unlike earlier attempts, I did not cheat in any way: there was no accompanying parallel text, I didn't look anything up in a dictionary and I hadn't previously read it in another language.

A real book, 250 pages long with no pictures. Preußler died on Februin Prien, Chiemsee.Įxcuse me for sounding smug, but I have managed to read a book in German. 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. They celebrated their wedding that same year.īetween 19 he was initially a primary school teacher, then a school principal in Rosenheim.

He spent the next five years in various POW camps in the Tatar Republic.Īfter his release in June 1949, he was lucky to find his displaced relatives and his fiancée, Annelies Kind in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim. Although he survived the military action on the Eastern Front, he was taken prisoner as a 21-year-old lieutenant in 1944. After he graduated school in 1942, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht Heer. His forefathers had lived in this area since the 15th century, working in the glass industry. He was born in Liberec (German: Reichenberg), Czechoslovakia. He has sold roughly 50 million copies worldwide. He won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1972 for Krabat. His best-known works are The Robber Hotzenplotz and The Satanic Mill (Krabat).

Otfried Preußler (sometimes spelled as Otfried Preussler) was a German children's books author.

Krabat by Otfried Preußler