José María Sánchez-Silva

José María Sánchez-Silva y García-Morales (born November 11, 1911 in Madrid , † January 15, 2002 ibid) was a Spanish writer.

life and work

José María Sánchez-Silva, son of a journalist, was born in 1911 in Madrid into a poor family. After his mother's death in 1920, the boy had to live on the streets for a time and eventually found accommodation in an orphanage. At the age of 17 he worked as a stenographer for the Madrid city council. In 1934 he published his first work El hombre de la Bufanda . After the Spanish Civil War , Sánchez-Silva worked like his father as a journalist, including for the Spanish newspapers Arriba and Pueblo .

He became internationally known as a children's book author of works that are characterized primarily by an ethical-religious, often fairytale-like tone. His greatest success was the novel Marcelino Pan y Vino , published in 1953 , which is about an orphan boy with special abilities growing up in a convent. This also achieved numerous editions in Germany, not least thanks to the success of its film version as The Secret of Marcellino (1955), in which Sanchez-Silva was also involved as a screenwriter. He then wrote two more novels in which the orphan boy Marcelino is the focus. Other works by the author such as The Heretic Tadeo or The Eselin Ungerad were also distributed in Germany. In 1968 he received the Hans Christian Andersen Prize , one of the highest awards for children's book authors worldwide - to this day (2019) Sánchez-Silva remains the only Spanish author to have received this prize.

Work (selection)

• El hombre de la Bufanda (1934)
• Marcelino Pan y Vino (1953)
  • German: The legend of the happy little life and beautiful death of Marcelino Pan y Vino , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1962
  • German: Marcelino: The legend of the little luck. Life u. beautiful death d. Marcelino , Herder Verlag, Freiburg 1962
  • German: Marcelino , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1965
  • German: Little Marcelino: a Spanish legend , Verlag Herder 1984, Freiburg im Breisgau (7 editions until 1994)
  • German: The big book by little Marcelino , Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2002
• Historias menores de Marcelino Pan y Vino (1953)
• Aventura en el cielo de Marcelino Pan y Vino (1954)
  • New stories from Marcelino , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1957
• El hereje (1956)
  • German: The heretic Tadeo , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1958
  • German: The heretic Tadeo , St. Benno Verlag, Leipzig 1966
• Fábula de la burrita Non (1956)
  • German: Die Eselin Ungerad , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1956 (2nd edition 1958)
• Tres novelas y pico (1958)
• Adios, Josefine (1962)
  • German: Adieu Josefine , Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1963
• Ladis, un gran pequeño (1967)
• Cosas de ratones y conejos (1981)

Awards

• 1957: Spanish National Prize for Literature
• 1968: Hans Christian Andersen Prize of the IBBY

Film adaptations

• 1955: The Secret of Marcellino (Marcelino pan y, vino) - Spanish cinema film, directed by Ladislao Vajda
• 1979: Kujira no Josephina - Spanish TV series, 23 episodes
• 2001: Marcelino (Marcelino pan y vino) - Spanish animated series, 52 episodes
• 2010: Marcelino (Marcelino pan y vino) - Spanish cinema film, directed by Jose Luis Gutierrez

Web links

• José María Sánchez-Silva in the Internet Movie Database (English)