Janosch, the writer, painter and illustrator who created the Tigerduck and the talkative Quasselkasper, has died at the age of 95. His work made him one of the defining figures in children’s books, pairing colorful adventures with vivid portrayals of loneliness, disappointment and childhood vulnerability.
In books such as “The Rain Car,” Janosch set ordinary frustrations against sudden flights of imagination. Its young protagonist, Wasti, is disappointed by a wooden toy car instead of the real one he wanted. In the rain, however, the wooden car grows, and Wasti sets off on a fantastical adventure. The story reflects a recurring feature of Janosch’s work: the boundaries between reality, dreams and magic remain fluid.
That sensitivity to children feeling small or powerless was rooted in Janosch’s own early life. Born Horst Eckert, he grew up in Hindenburg, then in Upper Silesia and now Zabrze, amid difficult family circumstances. He began working for a locksmith at 13. After his family moved west, he found work at a textile factory near Oldenburg.
Janosch later attended textile school in Krefeld and spent a trial semester at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1955. His early work ranged from representational and abstract painting to drawing and collage. He eventually developed his own picture books, as well as illustrations for other writers’ texts, which he often expanded with distinctive visual ideas.
His characters Tiger and Bear became widely popular, as did the Tigerduck. That success also led to the characters appearing in numerous commercial products, while Janosch’s autobiographically grounded novels for adults, including “Polski Blues” and “Sacharin im Salat,” received less attention. From around 1980, he turned increasingly toward painting and eventually settled on Tenerife.
Between 2013 and 2019, Janosch wrote the “Wondrak” columns for Zeit-Magazin. In one, he reflected on mortality, writing that people might become “a little immortal” through their writing, but that, in the end, everyone dies. In the closing exchange of his Wondrak book, he imagined the character being reborn as himself, “each time a little better.” Janosch died on Tuesday.
Sources: FAZ.