Margot Benary-Isbert
German-born children’s author known for her "depictions of humane, realistic characters."
Benary-Isbert attended the College St. Carolus and the University of Frankfurt. She worked as a secretary at the Museum of Ethnology and Anthropology in Frankfurt, Germany from 1910-1917, when she married Wilhelm Benary. They settled in Erfurt, in East Germany.
When the Russians took over Germany, she fled to the apartment of a friend in West Germany. In 1948 she wrote Die Arche Noah (The Ark). In 1953 it received a first prize at the New York Herald Tribune's Spring Book Festival. Post-war Germany became a common theme in most of her works.
In 1952 she moved to the United States, where she was naturalized in 1957 and worked as a writer until her death. She received the Jane Addams Children's Book Award from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1957 for "Annegret und Cara".
Most of Benary-Isbert's books were originally written and published in German; some were later translated into English and published again.
“It's going to be a hard time; we can count on that. But with all the misery, what opportunities to show mercy and brotherly love in our land, which has sinned so greatly against love. And patience! For now is the time when the victors, in the blind triumph of their victory, are likely to make mistakes. But that's not our concern, for we shall only be the sufferers, not the agents of suffering. What a power for peace will lie in our own powerlessness if we can only glimpse in it the sign of grace!”
“Too bad people can't always be playing music, maybe then there wouldn't be any more wars.”