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  • Author Nominee:Germany

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Peter Härtling
Germany, Author

Many authors get things all wrong. They don't understand children. They try to be little again, they lisp, they stammer, they use childish language – and they don't take children seriously.

– Peter Härtling

Novelist, poet, essayist, literary editor and journalist, Peter Härtling has played a decisive role in the renewal and formation of German children's literature during the past 36 years. Largely motivated by his concerns about the literature for young people written during the 1960s, he wanted to develop a literature that is much closer to the reality of the lives of children and young adults. To achieve this, he describes events entirely from the child's point of view, mercilessly showing the realities of divorce, death, unemployed parents, living with an older person. This unsentimental view of family life is transparent in his first novel for children, Und das is die ganze Familie [And that's the whole family] (1970), which was based on his own family life.

Peter Härtling was born in Chemnitz, Germany in 1933. In 1941 his family fled to Austria from Germany to avoid persecution by the National Socialists (Nazis), and subsequently, fleeing the Russian invasion, returned to Germany. His father died in 1945 in a Russian war camp, and his mother killed herself in 1946.

He attended art college, and published his first book of poetry in 1953. Subsequently, he went to work as a newspaper journalist, and later in publishing. He has been a freelance writer since 1974. He has published some twenty books for young people, and has won many awards.

A characteristic of Härtling's approach to writing for young people is to see events through the eyes of his protagonists, whether the story is told in the first or the third person. Oma tells the story of Karl, orphaned by the death of his parents in a car accident, who is brought up by his grandmother. The narrative shows events from the grandmother's viewpoint, as well as from Karl's. Krücke is an examination of another tough theme, that of a 12-year-old boy who becomes friendly with a prisoner of war. But here, as in his other books, Härtling allows his readers opportunities for optimism, while showing them the realities of the lives of his characters.


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Selected bibliography

Das war der Hirbel [That was Hirbel] 1973 Beltz & Gelberg
Oma [Granny] 1975 Beltz & Gelberg
Theo haut ab [Theo runs away] 1977 Beltz & Gelberg
Alter John [Old John] 1981 Beltz & Gelberg
Krücke [Crutches] 1987 Beltz & Gelberg [End Page 31]

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