Erich Kästner

Biography

Emil Erich Kästner was born in Dresden on February 23, 1899, the son of the saddler Emil and the hairdresser Ida Kästner (née Augustin). He attended school in Dresden and in 1913 began training to become an elementary school teacher at a teacher's seminar, which he abandoned shortly before graduation. During this time, Kästner began writing his first poems for the school newspaper.

In 1917, Kästner was drafted into military service, an experience that left him with a lifelong heart condition and fueled his anti-militarist beliefs. After the end of World War I, in 1919, he completed his high school education in Dresden and, thanks to a scholarship, began his studies in philosophy, German literature, history and drama at the University of Leipzig. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1925. While in Leipzig, Kästner continued to write poetry and worked as an editor for several Leipzig newspapers until he moved to Berlin in July 1927.

In Berlin, Kästner quickly found work as an editor and as a theater and film critic. He wrote for publications such as "Weltbühne," "Vossische Zeitung," "Berliner Tageblatt," "Simplicissimus," and "Neue Leipziger Zeitung". Kästner's literary and critical ambitions, as well as his politically progressive outlook, found fertile ground in the cosmopolitan and liberal Berlin of the Weimar Republic. In 1928, his first volume of poetry, "Herz auf Taille," was published and was a remarkable success, establishing Kästner as a prominent writer. A year later he published "Emil und die Detektive", his first children's book and his most successful work to date. He went on to write two more children's books, two more collections of poetry, and the screenplay for a highly successful stage adaptation of "Emil und die Detektive".

In 1931, Kästner entered the film business. Previously he had only written about film, but now he was involved in several productions. His most notable contribution was the adaptation of his greatest success, "Emil und die Detektive" ("Emil and the Detectives", 1931), directed by Gerhard Lamprecht. Kästner co-wrote the screenplay with Emmerich Pressburger and Billy Wilder. Although Kästner was not entirely satisfied with the film and some of Wilder's changes, it received worldwide acclaim and catapulted Kästner to international fame. In the same year, three more films with Kästner's participation premiered. He collaborated again with Pressburger on "Das Ekel" ("The Scoundrel", 1931), directed by Eugen Schüfftan and Franz Wenzler, and on "Dann schon lieber Lebertran" ("I'd Rather Have Cod Liver Oil", 1931), the first short film by Max Ophüls. For Alexander Granowsky's "Die Koffer des Herrn O.F. ("The Thirteen Trunks of Mr. O.F. ", 1931), Kästner wrote several song lyrics. Thanks to his work for the UFA in the early 1930s, Kästner was associated with many prominent figures in the film industry of the time.

Also in 1931, he wrote "Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten". In this work, Kästner expressed his ideals of social justice, democracy and solidarity, establishing himself as a moralist. In the same year, Kästner wrote the children's book "Pünktchen und Anton" ("Dot and Anton"), which was turned into a film directed by Thomas Engel in 1953, based on the screenplay that Kästner wrote himself.

With the Nazi's seizure of power on January 30, 1933, Erich Kästner's happy and productive time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic came to an end. Although he witnessed the burning of his books by Nazi students on May 10, he decided not to emigrate. His decision, which set him apart from many colleagues and collaborators such as Wilder and Pressburger, was driven primarily by his close relationship with his mother, whom he did not want to leave alone in Dresden, and his desire to be a witness to the Third Reich for future writings.

Despite being arrested and interrogated several times, Kästner continued to work as a writer during the early years of the dictatorship. Some of his most popular works, including the children's books "Das fliegende Klassenzimmer" and "Emil und die drei Zwillinge", as well as the three light novels "Drei Männer im Schnee," "Die verschwundene Miniatur," and "Der kleine Grenzverkehr" (originally published as "Georg und die Zwischenfälle"), were written during the first half of the Nazi era. "Das fliegende Klassenzimmer" was even published in Germany, while the other books had to be published abroad, in Switzerland, due to a 1933 publication ban. Kästner also continued to work as a playwright, often using pseudonyms such as Eberhard Foerster and Robert Neuner. Some of his plays were adapted for the big screen, such as "Verwandte sind auch Menschen" (1939) and "Frau nach Maß" (1940). In 1942 Erich Kästner wrote two scripts for UFA films, this time under the pseudonym Berthold Bürger: "Der kleine Grenzübergang" (1943), directed by Hans Deppe, and the prestigious UFA anniversary film "Münchhausen" ("The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", 1943), directed by Josef von Baky and starring Hans Albers and Brigitte Horney.

In 1943, Kästner was threatened with a permanent ban from working, and he relied on the income from his work at UFA. He experienced the end of the war in Mayrhofen, where he had fled from the dangers of Berlin with a film crew under the pretext of shooting a movie called "Das verlorene Gesicht".

In August 1945, Erich Kästner moved to Munich, where he began his second productive period after the 1920s in Berlin. He edited the arts section of the "Neue Zeitung" until March 1946, edited the youth magazine "Pinguin" until 1948, wrote texts for the cabaret "Schaubühne", and wrote reviews, essays, and reports. In 1948 he published these writings under the title "Der tägliche Kram. Chansons and Prose 1945-1948". Kästner also returned to writing children's books, and in 1949 he published both "Die Konferenz der Tiere", a remarkably political work for a children's book, and his second most successful book, "Das doppelte Lottchen". The latter has been made into several films, the first of which was directed by Josef von Baky in 1950. For this film, Kästner wrote the screenplay himself, won the German Film Award in 1951, and made a brief appearance in the film. In 1949, he became president of the all-German PEN Center, and in 1951, when the organization split, he assumed the same position for the PEN Center of West Germany.

In the following years, Kästner primarily wrote more children's books and many screenplays. Some of his works during this period included "Das fliegende Klassenzimmer" ("The Flying Classroom", 1954) and "Die verschwundene Miniatur" (1954), "Drei Männer im Schnee" ("Three Men in the Snow", 1955), "Salzburger Geschichten" (1957), and "Liebe will gelernt sein" (1963). In the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany, Kästner received numerous awards for his work, including the Georg Büchner Prize and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. He also distinguished himself through his activism against nuclear weapons and became a member of the "Kampf dem Atomtod" (literally, Fight Against Atomic Death) Action Committee in 1958. After publishing "Notabene 45" (1961), his reflection on the Third Reich, and later the two children's books about the "Little Man," Kästner nearly withdrew entirely from the literary world in 1965 and no longer participated in the adaptations of his works into films.

Erich Kästner died of esophageal cancer on July 29, 1974, in Munich. 

Author: Sebastian Rosenow
 
This text was created as part of the Master's program "Film Culture - Archiving, Programming, Presentation," jointly offered by the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main and the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum.