Mirjam Pressler is dead. As the publishing group Beltz announced that died, the writer and Translator this Wednesday at the age of 78 years in Landshut.

Mirjam Pressler name Gunkel was with the girl at 18. June was born in 1940 in Darmstadt, Germany as the illegitimate child of a Jewish woman and grew up in non-Jewish foster parents in a small village, and later because of the danger of neglect in a home. Her Childhood was marked by beatings and mental Close.

at the age of eleven she came to a boarding school. She studied six semesters at the Academy of fine arts in Frankfurt am Main. In 1962, she worked for a time in a kibbutz in Israel. In 1964, she married an Israeli and got between 1966 and 1969, three daughters. After separating from her husband in 1970, she returned to Munich, and the operating load to 1979 a pair of jeans. Next, she took a half day position as an Office assistant. By the way, she devoted herself to Writing which she had found, economic Hardship on the one hand, and the enthusiasm for modern youth books.

for her debut work, the novel “bitter chocolate” from the year 1980, the price received by Mirjam Pressler the Oldenburg children and youth book. The story of the thickness of Eva, eating her grief, reached from all of your books with 400,000 copies, the highest circulation. More than fifty books and over four hundred translated titles make the inner Mirjam Pressler one of the most successful German children’s book author. Central themes of most of her novels have a hard Childhood or the memory of the Shoah. “The young people are amazingly interested in the NS-time,” said the author in an Interview from her many readings in schools. “Those who say, that it should be finally concluded with the topic are more likely to be Older.”

If the happiness comes from

in addition to its own books, Pressler has established himself as an award-winning Translator of such books Beard Moeyarts, Julia Donaldson, Zeruya Shalevs or Amos Oz’. Great respect you have earned with your commitment to literature on the third Reich and Israel. For some years she was in the Alibaba Verlag, the publisher of a series of children’s books by Israeli authors. For their “contribution to the German language”, received in 2001, the Carl Zuckmayer medal for her life’s work as a writer and a Translator of the German book prize for her life’s work as a Translator the special prize of the German youth literature prize.