oh rotten day, or rather, week
Other than the Cameron/Pig revelations (btw, of all the puns, I think I like "Snoutrage" best), this has been an infuriating and depressing week politically. I feel like strangling the entire top hierarchy of the CSU (= Bavarian branch of the Conservatives, the head of same is currently in a power struggle with Merkel) for the vile kowtowing to Orbán the Fascist they've been doing (which I find even more revolting for the fact that it happened near my hometown, Bamberg, and Orbán was staying overnight in Bamberg, not half a mile from my home - ugh!), abd then there are the greedy manager lot responsible for the VW scandal which promises to be a long term disaster of unknown proportions (every seventh job in Germany is within the automotive industry) for whom strangling would be too good and who deserve a life time of toilet cleaning in refugee camps.
And now I've learned that Ellis Kaut has died. This is one of those deaths which objectively you can't call tragic - she lived to be 94 years old, she was a very successful writer who managed to create the most beloved her of any post war German book/radio/tv show (he was all three), full stop. But that's precisely why I'm sad. There are few writers who managed to give me something that was so big a part of my early childhood, and adolescence. Or life, because whenever I come across an episode of Pumuckl, I still can't resist listening or watching, as the case may be.
Her hero was a little red haired goblin called Pumuckl who usually is invisible to humans but at the beginning of the story by accident gets trapped at the work place of a Munich carpenter, Meister Eder, which means Eder can see him now. Pumuckl is basically a cheerful, anarchic, hyperactive child; Meister Eder is a slow, gemütlich carpenter settled in his routines and somewhere between middle aged and old: it's the odd couple charm, of course, though the pair has one thing in common from the get go, they love food (and beer). (Why, they're Bavarians living in Munich, of course they do.) Ellis Kaut wrote their stories first for radio, then as books, and then they became tv. Meister Eder was acted by Gustl Bayerhammer and Pumuckl voiced by Hans Clarin in both the audio versions, which I first listened to as a small child, and on tv when I was entering teenagedom. You couldn't imagine anyone else in the roles. On tv, Pumuckl was a cartoon character, the rest was live action. Shot on location in Munich; you couldn't imagine them in a non-Bavarian setting, either, and when much later, after Gustl Bayerhammer had died, the producers tried to shoot a movie with Pumuckl in a northern setting and without Meister Eder at his side, it promptly flopped. And when this year for an upcoming book anniversary a new illustrator prepared an edition where Pumuckl instead of having a belly is slimmed down to look "more like a energetic kid's hero of today" (so they phrased it), not just author Ellis Kaut - who had sold the rights, and thus legally couldn't intervene - but all of Germany revolted and was indignant, and so the publisher hastily had to scrap this and take it back, and thus republished Pumuckl still has his belly along with his passion for rhyme ("huch, das reimt sich ja, und was sich reimt, ist wahr!") and pranks and annoying Meister Eder's neighbors.
Pumuckl, of course, is immortal. Ellis Kaut has left us today. I'm so grateful for what she gave. Here, in case you know at least a bit German or want to have a visual impression, is an episode of the tv show, "Pumuckl and the first snow".
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1111354.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
And now I've learned that Ellis Kaut has died. This is one of those deaths which objectively you can't call tragic - she lived to be 94 years old, she was a very successful writer who managed to create the most beloved her of any post war German book/radio/tv show (he was all three), full stop. But that's precisely why I'm sad. There are few writers who managed to give me something that was so big a part of my early childhood, and adolescence. Or life, because whenever I come across an episode of Pumuckl, I still can't resist listening or watching, as the case may be.
Her hero was a little red haired goblin called Pumuckl who usually is invisible to humans but at the beginning of the story by accident gets trapped at the work place of a Munich carpenter, Meister Eder, which means Eder can see him now. Pumuckl is basically a cheerful, anarchic, hyperactive child; Meister Eder is a slow, gemütlich carpenter settled in his routines and somewhere between middle aged and old: it's the odd couple charm, of course, though the pair has one thing in common from the get go, they love food (and beer). (Why, they're Bavarians living in Munich, of course they do.) Ellis Kaut wrote their stories first for radio, then as books, and then they became tv. Meister Eder was acted by Gustl Bayerhammer and Pumuckl voiced by Hans Clarin in both the audio versions, which I first listened to as a small child, and on tv when I was entering teenagedom. You couldn't imagine anyone else in the roles. On tv, Pumuckl was a cartoon character, the rest was live action. Shot on location in Munich; you couldn't imagine them in a non-Bavarian setting, either, and when much later, after Gustl Bayerhammer had died, the producers tried to shoot a movie with Pumuckl in a northern setting and without Meister Eder at his side, it promptly flopped. And when this year for an upcoming book anniversary a new illustrator prepared an edition where Pumuckl instead of having a belly is slimmed down to look "more like a energetic kid's hero of today" (so they phrased it), not just author Ellis Kaut - who had sold the rights, and thus legally couldn't intervene - but all of Germany revolted and was indignant, and so the publisher hastily had to scrap this and take it back, and thus republished Pumuckl still has his belly along with his passion for rhyme ("huch, das reimt sich ja, und was sich reimt, ist wahr!") and pranks and annoying Meister Eder's neighbors.
Pumuckl, of course, is immortal. Ellis Kaut has left us today. I'm so grateful for what she gave. Here, in case you know at least a bit German or want to have a visual impression, is an episode of the tv show, "Pumuckl and the first snow".
Click to viewThis entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1111354.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.