Over 15.2 million copies of his books have been sold in the German language, and his works have been translated into over 55 other languages.

Preußler resided in Haidholzen, near Rosenheim. He won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1972 for Krabat. 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. They married that same year.īetween 19, he was initially a primary school teacher, then a school principal in Rosenheim. He spent the next five years in various POW camps in the Tatar Republic.Īfter his release in June 1949, he found his displaced relatives and his fiancée, Annelies Kind in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim. Although he survived the military action on the Eastern Front, he was taken prisoner as a 21-year-old lieutenant in 1944. After he graduated school in 1942, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted into the German Army. They changed their family name from the Czech Syrowatka to the German Preußler in 1941 during the Nazi occupation of the country. His mother Erna Syrowatka, née Tscherwenka, and his father Josef Syrowatka were both teachers. He was born in Liberec (Reichenberg), Czechoslovakia.

His best-known works are The Robber Hotzenplotz and The Satanic Mill ( Krabat). More than 50 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide and they have been translated into 55 languages. Otfried Preußler (sometimes spelled as Otfried Preussler both pronounced ( listen) born Otfried Syrowatka 20 October 1923 – 18 February 2013) was a German children's books author.

Krabat by Otfried Preußler