Otfried Preussler

Otfried Preußler (sometimes spelled as Otfried Preussler) was a German children's books author. His best-known works are The Robber Hotzenplotz and The Satanic Mill (Krabat).

He won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1972 for Krabat.

He has sold roughly 50 million copies worldwide.

He was born in Liberec (German: Reichenberg), Czechoslovakia. His forefathers had lived in this area since the 15th century, working in the glass industry. His parents were teachers. After he graduated school in 1942, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht Heer. 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 POW camps in the Tatar Republic.

After his release in June 1949, he was lucky to find his displaced relatives and his fiancée, Annelies Kind in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim. They celebrated their wedding 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.

Preußler died on February 18, 2013 in Prien, Chiemsee.