This article celebrates the largely overlooked centennial of German humorist and social critic Erich Kästner. Known internationally for children's books like Emil and the Detectives and Das Doppelte Lottchen, Kästner's broader literary contributions deserve recognition. His unique blend of absurdity and irreverence, coupled with his insightful social commentary, set him apart from traditional German literature. The article also touches upon his possible connections to Ireland, based on his autobiography and historical accounts.
A literary anniversary almost entirely unnoticed in the English-speaking world this year was that of Erich Kästner (1899-1974), one of the most delightful and incisive of German humorists and social commentators. Best known outside Germany for Emil and the Detectives, first in a series of ground-breaking books for children, as well as Das Doppelte Lottchen , origin of serial movie versions of The Parent Trap, his wider output deserves to be more widely appreciated.
His absurdist and irreverent sense of humour is an uneasy fit with the canon of his native literature. As he noted, humour was “rare in literature, and rarest of all in German literature. And in the histories of German literature, pride is taken in that very fact”. His comic sense would have fitted comfortably into a Flann O’Brien column. Writing at the time of the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s birth in 1949, he postulated that there would be a Goethe-Derby among German universities producing articles including “Goethe and the Control of Clothes Moths”; “Goethe’s Disapproval of Dogs on the Stage”; and “Goethe and the Fire Brigade”! His delightful autobiography, When I Was a Little Boy, mentions that he had visited Dublin although there is little evidence of when this occurred. He played tennis in London in 1938 with that most English of Irishmen, Bernard Bracken, and he may have extended his visit to Dublin. Another possibility would be a visit in the postwar years in his role as president of PEN, the writers’ organisation. The autobiography catches neatly his trademark apposition of wide-eyed innocence and mischievous spirit. In the foreword, he posits that all proper books should have a foreword. A book with a foreword he likened to house with a garden: a book without a foreword to the Dresden tenement where he was bor
Erich Kästner German Literature Humor Social Commentary Emil And The Detectives Das Doppelte Lottchen Dublin PEN
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