Wolf Erlbruch

Wolf Erlbruch (30 June 1948 – 11 December 2022) 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,

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.

Style Erlbruch tackled many adult topics in children's books, though he was not always fond of being characterized as an author for children. ), a book partly inspired by his then six-year-old son Leonard (now an illustrator himself). Many of the characters in his books, such as the mole in The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit (also known in English as The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business), have little round black glasses, similar to those worn by Erlbruch himself. 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 (2008) features a duck who becomes friends with Death, and in Ein Himmel für den kleinen Bären (A heaven for the little bear) a bear cub tries to find his recently deceased grandfather in bear heaven.

Critical reception The Guardian called Duck, Death and the Tulip (2009), 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 (translated into English as The Fearsome Five) 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, In 2017, he became the first German to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for picture book 1993, Das Bärenwunder Zilveren Griffel 1999, Leonard Bologna Ragazzi Award 2000, Das Neue ABC-Buch , Wuppertal, 2003 Bologna Ragazzi Award 2004, The Big Question Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, 2017

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

Translated into Dutch for the 1999 Kinderboekenweek, Norwegian.

As illustrator Aggrey, James (1985). 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