Heinrich Maria Denneborg

Heinrich Maria Denneborg (born June 7, 1909 in Horst-Emscher, today a district of Gelsenkirchen ; † November 1, 1987 in Neggio near Lugano / Ticino in Switzerland ) was a German children's book author and puppeteer .

life and work

Denneborg grew up as the son of a roofer in Gelsenkirchen-Buer and graduated after attending the elementary school an apprenticeship as a draftsman . In 1931 he made up his Abitur and began studying theater and German studies , which he broke off.

As a schoolboy he was already active in literature and received the Ullstein Story Prize in 1929. At the same time he had discovered puppetry for himself and achieved initial successes with pieces like Genoveva and an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin . He settled in Gelsenkirchen as a freelance puppeteer and writer and moved to the Halfmannshof artists' estate in 1935 . His first book The Wooden Men. A novel for happy people between the ages of nine and ninety was published in 1932, later also in Dutch , Flemish and Slovenian . In 1934 he received the Niederrheinischer Narrator Prize. The author also worked for the Gelsenkirchen City Library until 1939 , where he regularly organized puppet shows and made the institute known nationwide. During the war , Denneborg visited the German soldiers at the front with his puppet theater and published Das Buch vom Kasper (1940). In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Americans in Italy .

In 1947 he began to travel extensively with his puppet theater through West Germany and Switzerland. He published Kasperle books and, with Daniel, the little watchmaker, his first children's book in 1953. In 1955 Das Eselchen Grisella followed , which was translated into thirteen languages. Denneborg's greatest success was the children's book Jan und das Wildpferd (1957), which is still popular today , for which he received the German Youth Book Prize in 1958 . The sequel Das Wildpferd Balthasar (1959) was included in the selection list of the German Youth Book Prize in 1960. Both books appeared in more than 15 languages ​​and cemented Denneborg's reputation as a children's author. In the following years he mainly wrote Punch and Judy books such as Punch and Judy Flower or Die Alte Hexe Wackelzahn (1963) and children's non-fiction books on the subject of puppetry and building. But he also dedicated a small memorial with the cat story Kater Kasper (1961) to his adopted home Neggio in Ticino, Switzerland . Denneborg's Punch and Judy School (1968) was on the selection list for the German Youth Book Prize in the non-fiction category in 1969 . On behalf of the Goethe Institute, he toured Scandinavia, South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand with his dolls as the cultural ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany. He has received numerous awards and prizes and has become a member of the International PEN Club . Since 1948, Denneborg had produced more than 30 radio programs , mainly for children's radio , partly together with his future wife Silvia Gut ; in the 1970s, radio play versions of Grisella and Jan and the wild horse were made .

In 1987 Denneborg died in Neggio in Ticino, where he had a second residence next to the Gelsenkirchen artist settlement Halfmannshof.

Awards

• Honorary membership of the Prague UNIMA , 1969
• Honorary membership of the IJB (International Youth Library), Munich, 1969
• Membership of the VS and the International PEN Club, London, 1971
• Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class, 1969
• Golden Medal of the City of Gelsenkirchen, 1974
• Ivory medal from the German Book Trade Association, 1974
• Bronze plaque of the city of Duisburg, 1977

(The list of awards was taken from a flyer published by Denneborg itself.)

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Maria Denneborg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Heinrich Maria Denneborg in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors