Retold by Zelda
*Prologue
 Erich was born to Emil and Ida Kästner on February
23rd, 1899. Erich’s father, Emil, was a master
saddlemaker. His mother, Ida, was a maidservant and
housewife, and in her thirties trained to be a hairstylist
in order to supplement her husband's income. Erich
was the only child born to Emil and Ida.
 He grew up in the “Königsbrücker Straße“of Dresden's
Äußere Neustadt.
Chapter 1: “Great Expectations”
 In 1913, when he was 14, Kästner entered a teacher training
school in Dresden, but left the school in 1916 shortly before
completing the courses that would have qualified him to
teach at public schools.
 Kästner returned to school at the end of the war and passed
his Abitur with distinction, earning a coveted scholarship
from the city of Dresden.
 In the Autumn of 1919, he enrolled in the University of
Liepzig to study history, philosophy, theatre, and the
German language and literature. His hard work brought
him to Rostock and Berlin, and in 1925 he received a
doctorate for a thesis on Frederick the Great and German
literature.
Chapter 2: “The Call of the Wild”
 In 1914, when he was 15, World War I broke out. He
later wrote about the event that it "brought an end to
my childhood." Kästner was drafted in 1917 and
became part of a heavy artillery company. The
brutality of the training he underwent as a soldier
affected Kästner profoundly; the merciless drilling by
Kästner's sergeant Waurich caused the author a lifelong heart affliction. Kästner critiques the sergeant's
character in his poem Sergeant Waurich.
 This, plus the slaughter of war had a strong influence
on his antimilitaris opinions.
Chapter 3: “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”
 Kästner paid for his studies by working as a writer for the
prestigious Neue Leipziger Zeitung newspaper. Kästner's
increasingly critical reviews and the "frivolous" publication
of his sensual poem Abendlied des Kammervirtuosen
(Evening Song of the Chamber Virtuoso) got him fired in
1927.
 The same year, Kästner moved to Berlin. He continued to
write for the Neue Leipziger Zeitung under the pseudonym
"Berthold Bürger" ("Bert Citizen") as a freelance
correspondent. Kästner would later use several other
alliases so he could still be published in the same
newspaper, such as "Melchior Kurtz," "Peter Flint," and
"Robert Neuner".
Chapter 4: “Fahrenheit 451”
 On May 1933, the Nazi supporters burned upwards of 25,000
volumes of "un-German" books. The scripted rituals called for
high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to
address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places,
students threw the pillaged and unwanted books into the
bonfires with great joyous ceremony, band-playing, songs, "fire
oaths," and incantations.
 In Berlin, some 40,000 people gathered in the Opernplatz to
hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: “No to decadence
and moral corruption! Yes to decency and morality in family and
state! I consign to set flames upon the writings of Heinrich Mann,
Ernst Gläser, and Erich Kästner.”
“Wo man Bücher
verbrennt, verbrennt
man am Ende auch
Menschen.“
~Heinrich Heine
"Where they burn
books, they will
in the end also
burn people.“
~Heinrich Heine
Chapter 5: “In Cold Blood”
 Erich had the unique experience of
being the only known author to stay
behind in Berlin to watch his life’s
work be set aflame.
 It is unsure why Erich stayed
behind and didn’t escape Berlin like
his fellow authors did during the
censorship. Historians believe his
bedridden mother might have
influenced his choice to stay
behind. Kästner had a particularly
close relationship with his mother.
While he lived in Leipzig and
Berlin, he wrote her daily letters and
postcards. (His novels, too, seem to
be pervaded by overbearing
mothers.)
 Kästner received an exemption to
write the well-regarded screenplay
Münchhausen under the
pseudonym Berthold Bürger in 1942.
The Gestapo interrogated Kästner
several times, and Kästner was
denied entry into the new Nazicontrolled national writers' guild.
 A “gag order” (black listed) was sent
out for Kastner to prevent
publishers from printing any more
of his work during the Third Reich.
He retaliated by going underground
and published apolitical novels such
as Drei Männer im Schnee (Three
Men in the Snow) in Switzerland.
Chapter 6: “Brave New World”
 At the end of World War II,
Erich moved to Munich
where he published a
youth targeted magazine
called “Pinguin”. He wrote
many skits, songs, audio
plays, speeches, essays
about post-war Germany
during 1945-1951. This span
of time was his most
productive of all his
writing periods.
 Bombs destroyed Kästner's
home in Berlin in 1944. In
early 1945, Kästner and
others faked a filming
assignment in the remote
Mayrhofen in Tyrol to
avoid the brutal Soviet
assault on Berlin. Kästner
was in Mayrhofen when
the war ended.
 Kästner wrote about these
events an in a diary that
was published as Notabene
45 in 1961.
Chapter 7: “Paradise Lost”
 Kästner's optimism during the
post-war years soon faded as the
people of West Germany
attempted to normalize their
lives following the economic
reforms of the early 1950s and
the ensuing boom called the
"economic miracle"
("Wirtschaftswunder"). His
pacifism suffered further with
the call by chancellor Konrad
Adenauer and his allies to
militarize West Germany.
Adenauer wanted to do
Germany’s part in defending the
democracies of Western Europe
and the NATO against the Soviet
dictatorships, including
communist East Germany.
 Kästner remained a steadfast
pacifist, speaking at the
antimilitarist Ostermarsch
demonstrations that protested
the stationing of nuclear
weapons in West Germany. He
later also took a stand against
the Vietnam War.
 Kästner began publishing less and
less, in part because of growing
alcoholism. He did not integrate
into any of the post-war literary
movements in West Germany and in
the 1950s and 1960s was
remembered as mainly an author of
children's books. Kästner was not
rediscovered as the serious writer of
his work during the Weimar
Republic until the 1970s.
Chapter 8: “A Tale Of Two Cities”
 In his Notebene 45 entry
in 1945, Kästner
describes his shock at
arriving in Dresden
shortly after its
firebombing in February
1945 and finding it a pile
of ruins. So much so that
he could recognize none
of the streets and
landmarks among which
he had spent his
childhood and youth.
 His autobiographical book
When I Was a Little Boy
begins with a lament for
Dresden:
 "I was born in the most
beautiful city in the world.
Even if your father was the
richest man in the world, he
could not take you to see it,
because it does not exist any
more. In a thousand years
was her beauty built, in one
night was it utterly
destroyed".
Chapter 9: “Gone With The Wind”
 He passed away on July 29th,
1974. He was 75 years old.
 Hans Sarkowicz and Franz Josef
Görtz list over 350 stories that
Erich’s written from 1923 to 1933,
but the actual number may be
much higher. Much was lost
when Kästner's flat burnt during
a WWII bombing raid in
February, 1944.
 After his death, the Bavarian
Academy of Arts established a
literary prize in his memory:
The Erich Kästner Prize.
Das Doppelte Lottchen
(The Double Lottie)
*Released in 1949
Two nine-year-old girls
(feisty Lisa Palfy from Vienna, and
shy Lottie Horn from Munich)
meet on a summer camp in
Bohrlaken on Lake Bohren.
They have never seen each other
before, but soon find out that they
are identical twins. They switch
places to fool their parents.
Der 35. Mai (The 35th of May)
 Published in 1932
 With the help of a talking horse
named Negro Caballo, Conrad
and his Uncle enter into a huge
wardrobe, and end up in a series
of fantasy lands, starting with
the land of Cockaigne ("free
entry — children half price"),
followed by a mediaeval castle
complete with jousting, an
upside-down world in which
children send bad parents to
reform school, and a science
fiction nightmare city with
mobile phones. They can only
get to this world on the 35th of
May, one shot deal.
Emil und Die Detektive
 Published in 1929
 Emil and the Detectives
was Erich’s biggest success,
was translated into over 58
languages, and was one of
his few books to escape
Nazi-censorship (it was
considered too popular
and too harmless, thus
escaping the ban.)
 It has had multiple plays,
movies, and tv shows made
from the book.
 Gerhard Lamprecht's 1931
film version of Emil und
die Detektive was a great
success. Kästner, however,
was dissatisfied with the
screenplay. This led him to
work as a screenwriter for
the Babelsberg film
studios.
 The Emil books had an
important role in
popularizing the sub-genre
of "Children Detectives",
later taken up by other
writers of children's books
such as Enid Blyton.
*Discussion Guide
Online sources:
http://www.theweeweb.co.uk/public/author_profile.php?id=388
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/kastner.htm
http://www.historyplace.com/specials/faq/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_35th_of_May,_or_Conrad%27s_
Ride_to_the_South_Seas
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005852
Book sources:
Display: 5 German Authors, Their Life & Work
Publication by: Inter Nationes Bad Godesberg