Otfried Preußler

The recorded working language is German. The field of work recorded is creative and professional writing, children's and young adult literature and pedagogy. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are fairy tale. Works named in the authority record are Krabat and The Robber Hotzenplotz. Distinctions recorded are Bavarian Order of Merit, Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Zilveren Griffel and Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

He was born in Liberec, Czechoslovakia. His mother, Erna Syrowatka (née Tscherwenka), and his father, Josef Syrowatka, were both teachers. They changed their family name from the Czech Syrowatka to the German Preußler in 1941 during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. After he graduated school in 1942 – in the midst of World War II – he was drafted into the German Army. 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 prisoner-of-war (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. He won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1972 for Krabat. Preußler resided in Haidholzen, near Rosenheim. Over 15.2 million copies of his books have been sold in the German language, and his works have been translated into over 55 other languages. Having essentially retired from writing stories, which had become his main occupation, he undertook the relation of his experiences as a prisoner in the POW camps; those memoirs were to be published after his death.

• The Robber Hotzenplotz (1974 film) (1974) • Krabat – The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1978) • Neues vom Räuber Hotzenplotz (1979) • Malá čarodějnice (1984) • Das kleine Gespenst (1992) • Der Räuber Hotzenplotz (2006) • Krabat (2008) • Das Kleine Gespenst (English: The Little Ghost) (2013) • The Little Witch (2018 film) (2018)

• Otfried Preußler – Ich bin Krabat. Director: Thomas von Steinaecker, ZDF, Germany, 52 minutes, 2023 (arte, available until 31 December 2023, German)