Wolf Erlbruch


Wolf Erlbruch was a German illustrator and writer of children's books, who became professor at several universities. He combined various techniques for the artwork in his books, including cutting and pasting, drawing, and painting. His style was sometimes surrealist and is widely copied inside and outside Germany. Some of his storybooks have challenging themes such as death and the meaning of life. They won many awards, including the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1993 and 2003. Erlbruch received the Hans [Christian Andersen Medal] in 2006 for his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator. In 2017, he was the first German to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Life

Erlbruch was born in Wuppertal on 30 June 1948. His father was a textile technician. As a child, the boy preferred drawing to playing. Erlbruch studied graphic design at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen from 1967 to 1974. As a student he worked in advertising, and also worked as an illustrator for magazines such as Stern and Esquire. His first assignment as an illustrator of children's books came in 1985, when he was asked by the Wuppertal publisher Peter Hammer to illustrate Der Adler, der nicht fliegen wollte by James Aggrey; Erlbruch's son Leonard had just been born, and Erlbruch wanted him to be able to say, "Look, my papa made a children's book." From then on, he both illustrated and wrote many books.
Erlbruch taught as a professor of illustration at the Fachhochschule Düsseldorf from 1990 to 1997, then from 1997 as a professor in the department of architecture, design and art of the University of Wuppertal, and from 2009 to 2011 as a professor of illustration at the Folkwang University of the Arts.
Erlbruch died in Wuppertal on 11 December 2022 at age 74.

Style

Erlbruch tackled many adult topics in children's books, though he was not always fond of being characterized as an author for children. Some of his books have autobiographical notes, such as Leonard, a book partly inspired by his then six-year-old son Leonard. Many of the characters in his books, such as the mole in The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit, have little round black glasses, similar to those worn by Erlbruch himself. He was praised for the original and surreal quality of his work. According to Silke Schnettler, writing in the German newspaper Die Welt, the "Erlbruch-style", whose main characters are skewed and sometimes disproportionate but nonetheless recognizable, has become widely imitated inside and outside Germany.
Death is a recurring topic in Erlbruch's books. Duck, Death and the Tulip features a duck who becomes friends with Death, and in Ein Himmel für den kleinen Bären a bear cub tries to find his recently deceased grandfather in bear heaven.
The moral of his own stories, as Schnettler in 2003 reported Erlbruch saying, is that "people should look at themselves from a distance and tolerate what is unique, strange, and sometimes not so pretty about themselves – in other words their peculiarities. This is what Erlbruch considers to be self-awareness."

Illustrations

Many of Erlbruch's illustrations were made using mixed media and collage. For The Story of the Little Mole, for instance, he drew the characters on brown wrapping paper, and pasted them on white paper.

Critical reception

The Guardian called Duck, Death and the Tulip, about a duck who finds herself being followed by and then becoming acquainted with death, an "outstanding book": "There is something infinitely tender in the way Death strokes her ruffled feathers into place, lifts her body and places it gently in the river, watching as she drifts off into the distance."
Erlbruch's illustrations for Die fürchterlichen Fünf were adapted for the stage by the Landestheater Tübingen, a theatre in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

Awards and legacy

In 2003, Erlbruch received the Gutenberg Award of the City of Leipzig for his contribution to the book arts, a cultural award of his native city Wuppertal, and a special Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for his body of work as illustrator. The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Erlbuch received the illustration award in 2006 for his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator. In 2017, he became the first German to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
In 2004, the Erlbruch family started the Wolf Erlbruch Foundation. Its purpose is to act as a custodian for Erlbruch's work, and the money awarded for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award goes toward that purpose.

Works

Erlbruch's works include:

As writer

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As illustrator

  • Aggrey, James. Der Adler der nicht fliegen wollte, translated by Alfons Michael Dauer. Jugenddienst-Verlag, Wuppertal,.
  • Translated into Dutch.
  • Translated into German, French, Korean, Portuguese, Polish, Spanish, Italian
  • Translated into Spanish
  • Translated into German, French, Korean, Spanish
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