James Krüss

• Name — James Krüss • Birth Name — James Jacob Hinrich Krüss • Born — 31 May 1926 • Birthplace — Heligoland, Germany • Died — 2 August 1997 • Place of death — Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain • Occupation — Writer • Nationality — German • Period — 1946–? • Genre — Children's literature • Notableworks — Timm Thaler

Krüss was born as the son of the electrician Ludwig Krüss and his wife Margaretha Krüss (born Friedrichs) in Heligoland. In 1941, during World War II, the inhabitants of the island were evacuated to Arnstadt, Thuringia, later to Hertigswalde, near Sebnitz, Saxony. After finishing high school in 1943, he studied to become a teacher, first in Lunden until 1943, Schleswig-Holstein, then in Ratzeburg until 1944, then finally in Brunswick. In 1944, he volunteered to serve in the air force and was stationed in Ústí nad Labem, now in the Czech Republic, at the end of World War II. From 1945 on he lived with his parents in Cuxhaven.

In 1946, he published his first book, Der goldene Faden and then visited the college of education in Lüneburg, Lower Saxony. In 1948, he received his teaching license, but never worked as a teacher. In the same year, he moved to Reinbek, near Hamburg, and founded the magazine Helgoland, which was meant for inhabitants of the island, who had been expelled from it; it existed until 1956. In 1949, he moved to Lochham, near Munich, where he got to know the author Erich Kästner, among others. From 1956, he wrote audio dramas for children and children's poems together with Peter Hacks. In 1956, Krüss published the children's book The Lighthouse on Lobster Cliffs with the publishing house Friedrich Oetinger. He also travelled to Italy and Yugoslavia. The subsequently well-known picture book Henriette, whose eponymous protagonist is an anthropomorphized steam locomotive-hauled train, and which started a small series of similar, related picture books, was first published in 1958. After a reading of My Great Grandfather and I (which won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1960) in the Tagesschau in 1960, he suddenly became very famous. In the same year he bought a house with a garden in Gilching, Bavaria. In 1962, his arguably most famous book Timm Thaler was published. It would later be adapted into a TV miniseries in 1979 directed by Sigi Rothemund, which was also known as The Boy Who Lost His Laugh in the United Kingdom. In 1965, he bought a house in Gran Canaria and settled there a year later. At the end of his life, Krüss had heart problems and spent a lot of time in clinics. In 1968 Krüss received the Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People, the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. He died in 1997 in Gran Canaria and was buried at sea on 27 September near Helgoland.