School children read their books, love cat Mog, and marvel at the “pink rabbit”. In 1933, fled Judith Kerr and her family from the Nazis. Two years ago we met you for our DW-Special “After the escape”.
It was in the summer of 2017: Judith Kerr is a very English Lady, first of all, she asks for tea. And so I sat opposite her in a comfy armchair in her London living room: A petite old lady in the elegant blue dress, with pearl necklace, the white Curls carefully coiffed. Every five minutes out of a plane killed over us here in London, the South, in the flight path of Heathrow airport, lived Judith Kerr for over half a century.
An unobtrusive neighbor
Here she lived together with her great love, her husband Nigel Kneale, the father of her two children – until his death in 2006. Son and daughter grew up here, in a typical English brick house with a manicured front yard velvet rhododendron bushes and flower beds – just as cozy as inconspicuous as the neighboring houses.
Even as a child, Judith Kerr signed passion: drawing 1932-38
That this is the home of a world-famous best-selling author, whose books, translated into over 20 languages and more than 10 million copies have been sold, not saw you.
Most of all they wrote and drew children’s books
For almost a year, we have tried to get for our Film-Special “After the escape” an interview with Judith Kerr. Not so easy, because the loved one writes and draws children’s books. And published a book after the other: About a year after “A seal for Mr. Albert” (2016) 2017 “Katinka’s appeared to Tail”. In it one of your own cats is once again in focus, as in the successful series cat Mog. Clearly, that to us also during our visit a cat around the legs and strokes.
World success: Judith Kerr’s autobiographical trilogy
“As Hitler and the pink rabbit steel”
World famous Judith Kerr has made but a novel in which cats do not play a role: “As Hitler the pink rabbit steel”.
He tells how a little girl with his family in 1933, fleeing the Nazis from Germany – it is Judith Kerr’s own story. How much truth is in the novel put, I ask you. “Everything Important was the same way, I wrote it as honestly as I could,” she replies. “If you write in the first Person, then everything must be exactly as it was – otherwise it’s cheating.”
Abrupt end of a happy Childhood in Berlin-Grunewald
Born Judith Kerr on 14. June 1923 in Berlin. Her parents, Alfred Kerr, the most important theatre critics of the Weimar Republic, and his wife Julia, née Weismann, a composer, are. Alfred Kerr is a staunch opponent of Adolf Hitler, whose national socialist party wins at the beginning of the 1930s, more and more followers. He is also a Jew.
Judith Kerr with her father, Alfred Kerr, to 1931-34
When Hitler in January 1933, Reich Chancellor, flees Alfred Kerr to Prague. In a night and fog action Judith, her two years older brother Michael and their mother, the beautiful house in the idyllic Berlin’s Grunewald – just before the attempted secret police with their passports to collect leave in March. In Switzerland you meet with the father.
“Chuchichäschtli” and again a move
Here, Judith is learning your first foreign language: Swiss German, Swiss German. “The other children have tested me in school if I can. The examination of the word ‘Chuchichäschtli’ kitchen Cabinet was.” However, Switzerland remains the only intermediate station. Just as the children have become accustomed to the new environment, comes the next move: Through the South of France, it goes in 1934 to Paris, where, in the meantime, many of the German refugees. Here Alfred Kerr hopes that the orders remained in Switzerland. Judith does not understand a word of French, but they are biting themselves, learn the language so fast that it is already after one year, the final exams at school shiny.
“Is it not wonderful to be a refugee!”
Once, recalls Judith Kerr, the looks with the father from the balcony of your small apartment on the roof – the very top of it is cheaper – over the rooftops of Paris. “And as I said to my father: ‘Is it not wonderful to be a refugee!'” Judith Kerr is smiling. “That must have cheered up. Because it was for my parents incredibly hard.
Also in Paris the orders for the father to stay. Judith Kerr’s mother has thoughts of suicide
But you have made it so that we have noticed little of it.” Her mother, at the time, thoughts of suicide, and the children want to take in the death, she learns only decades later, as she sorted the correspondence of their parents. “I saw the date on the letter, and thought, As I had been taught but French. That would have been really very annoying, if I had died, just as I could in French.” Fine, deep, black British humour.
A home full of comfort – even on the run
Also in 1935, the next move takes place, it is possible to offer the parents, Judith and her brother a home full of a sense of security. This time it’s to London again in the hope of finding a job for the father. Now the Savings have run out as well as, the mother holds the family with odd jobs, while the father writes in his rooms – texts, which he can almost never sell. Judith is already learning skilled in languages. Soon the family speaks English to each other.
Judith (on the right) around 1935-1940 with mother Julia and brother Michael in London
“Enemy Alien”, or English?
Then in 1939 the Second world war begins. Judith Kerr is 17 years old when the German air force London bombing. She works at the Red cross, organised the distribution of clothes for the British soldiers. One day a phone call from Cambridge, where her brother is studying law comes. He’s been detained as an “Enemy Alien” as an enemy alien, firm and interned. He had to flee as a Jew from the Nazis, and waiting to get the British nationality, had played no role. About relationships, succeed in it, Michael from a camp on the Isle of Man are free get. Immediately, he logs on as a Pilot in the Royal Air Force and fought against the Germans.
In the Second world war, the Nazis Judith Kerr’s bombard new home in London
“At the end of the war it was clear to me that this is my home,” says Judith Kerr. “But it wasn’t, of course, for our parents. Have never hear somewhere.”
“As Hitler and the pink rabbit steel”: school reading in Germany
In her autobiographical young adult novel trilogy (the “Pink rabbit” will follow two more volumes) portrays Judith Kerr’s impressive, what an escape and a new beginning with a family. Write you can die about it only after the death of the parents: Alfred Kerr, in 1948, her mother in 1965. Since your son and daughter, for example, are as old as Judith and her brother, as they had to leave Germany in 1933. “And then I thought, I would like to write for my children’s book, as it was then.” The “Pink rabbit” appears in 1971 and is a world success. In Germany it belongs to the school reading, Oscar-winner Caroline Link has filmed the book exactly new (scheduled theatrical release: December 2019).
The planes do not disturb: Judith Kerr, in the garden of their house in London South
From the an hour, we were their agent for the Interview, and were almost two and a half. Judith Kerr was a wonderful Narrator, we listened to her fascinated. Also, you seemed to be pleasure to have had to tell us from your life. At the end we filmed you in the garden. Slightly stooped, but with firm steps she walked across the lawn, climbed lightly over the camera – and-hand one, we had moved through her dining room. The planes were outside, heard even louder, the cat hid in the bushes. And we have to forget to take a souvenir photo with her. As I thought, we had stowed the camera Equipment in the team car, and Judith Kerr waved one last Time. With your agent, she rounded the corner and in one of Houses disappeared. But even without a photo of the encounter with Judith Kerr vividly will remain in my memory.
You want to hear, and like touching Judith Kerr talks about her Childhood?
Discover our multimedia Online Special “After the escape”.
Here you will find the TV-documentation “After the escape” on YouTube.