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.”
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureA happy Childhood
Judith Kerr (right) grows up sheltered in Berlin, her brother Michael is two years older. The children of the well-known theatre critic Alfred Kerr, to have a lot of freedom. Her mother Julia is a pianist, and composed a lot of at home. On the way to school Judith buys pens often Colorful and features stories that she has experienced with her Girlfriends. To Count and to read, she has little desire.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureFather Kerr to speak on the Radio
Alfred Kerr is a staunch opponent of the national socialists. Beginning in the spring of 1932, he has every Monday in the German broadcasting his own radio show. The threats of the Nazis to keep the parents in front of the children a secret. Christmas in 1932, may Judith and her brother for the first Time to the cinema: “Emil and the detectives”. The two children are not aware that they are at risk as a Jewish family.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureAdolf Hitler and the Nazis come to Power
30. In January of 1933 appointed Adolf Hitler (center), the “leader” of the NSDAP, Chancellor of the Reich. The political upheavals take place in a rapid pace your run. The family of Kerr lives in Berlin-Grunewald, the children get the political changes directly. But you can feel the anxiety of the parents. Your novel for young people called Judith Kerr later: “As Hitler the pink rabbit steel”.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureThe last few weeks in the capital of the Reich
In February 1933, the father is with severe cold in bed. The national socialists have taken Power everywhere in the Berlin parades. Trade unionists and Regime opponents are persecuted, the first waves of arrests in run. Alfred Kerr is warned that his passport confiscated shall be confiscated. 15. February, he flees at night in the last Minute over the border to Prague.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureAdventurous escape to Switzerland
Judith and her brother say not a word about the escape of the father. The mother begins to pack secretly suitcases, children’s drawings by Judith takes you. On the day before the Reichstag elections on 5. March 1933 get off the train in Switzerland, just in time. There they meet the father again. The siblings, the trip appears to exile rather as a great adventure.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureThe Burning Of Books 1933
As a Jewish writer Alfred Kerr has long been in the crosshairs of the Nazis. 10. In may 1933, prior to the Berlin Humboldt-University, a public book burning organized by the “German student body”. The books of Alfred Kerr thrown by the jeering crowd into the fire, as well as the other emigrants Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Erich Kästner, Franz Werfel.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureFlight Stations Are: Lugano, Zurich, Paris
Judith is nine, as her sheltered Childhood is ended by the escape abroad. The two siblings are now immigrants, children, the family penniless. Everything that is dear to you and important, you have to leave. “The piano was gone, the curtains, all the toys, the pink rabbit,” she writes later. In Paris with the Kerr’s to refer to after a long Odyssey of a furnished apartment.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureEmigrants are living in poverty
Like all the Jewish refugees the Nazis expropriated the Kerr’s and their possessions confiscated. The family lives in exile in great poverty. Judith, I like it anyway, to be a refugee: “Paris was wonderful,” she writes later. Father Kerr can feed with the Letter, the family hardly. Out of financial need, you must leave Paris, and land in 1936, in a shabby emigrants hotel in London.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureThe hard times of war in London
On 1. September 1939, the Nazis break the 2. World war from the fence. After the bomb on London, the Kerr’s are attacks at once “friendly enemy aliens”. The Jewish emigrants of the family experienced a lot of solidarity by the British. “The people were so good to us, so brave. After all, we were Germans,” recalls Judith Kerr, the developed Patriotic feelings for their new home town.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureNew Home United Kingdom
In 1946, Judith begins (on the right) thanks to a scholarship to study at the “Central School of Arts and Crafts”. Odd jobs as a drawing teacher, and editing at the BBC, to enable your independence from the parents. Her mother works occasionally as an interpreter for the Americans, even during the Nuremberg trials. In 1947, Judith holds pride in a Pass in the hands – as a British citizen.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureSuccess with your children’s books
Judith Kerr writes children’s books: 1968 “The Tiger Who came to Tea”. The lyrics in her husband Nigel Kneale, the BBC has learned helps the drawings illustrates Kerr by Hand – only with colored pencils and eraser. In 1970, Mog The Forgetful Cat”, both follow-up books Giant follows “. Until her high age, she sat at the drawing table and thought up stories for children.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureMillion pad for a youth book
Around the globe, the children will read books by Judith Kerr, the children love their heart-warming stories end. Her most famous book in Germany “Than Hitler and the pink rabbit steel”, a classic of the emigrant literature – for adults as well. As a trilogy it tells the story of their refugee family. 1974 is awarded the “German youth book prize”.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureIn her books world-home
Loved Judith Kerr came to readings for children. Regularly, she visited her old home city of Berlin, and introduced her latest book. In 2016, she was with the children’s book “A seal for Mr. Albert” (in English: Mr. Cleghorns Seal”) on a reading tour, with 93 years. In the audience at the literature festival, many refugee children were.
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Children’s book author Judith Kerr – escape as adventureDraw the elixir of life
For over 80 years, Britain was their new home. “I am very happy in England,” she said in 2017, in the charming German, her Berlin Childhood. In a TV Interview for the DW-documentation “After the flight” she told of their escape and life as an emigrant in London. These memories remain even after your death in your books come alive.
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.