Otfried Preußler

Who was Otfried Preußler?

Otfried Preußler was a German children's books author. More than 50 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide and they have been translated into 55 languages. His best-known works are The Robber Hotzenplotz and The Satanic Mill.

He was born in Reichenberg, Bohemia. His forefathers had lived in this area since the 15th century, working in the glass industry. His parents were teachers. After he graduated school in 1942, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht Heer. Although he survived the military action on the Eastern Front, he was taken prisoner as a 21-year-old lieutenant in 1944. He spent the next five years in various POW camps in the Tatar Republic.

After his release in June 1949, he found his displaced relatives and his fiancée, Annelies Kind in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim. They married that same year.

Between 1953 and 1970 he was initially a primary school teacher, then a school principal in Rosenheim. 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.