Kat Menschik

Self-portrait Kat Menschik

Kat Menschik (born April 6, 1968 in Luckenwalde , Potsdam district , GDR ) is a German illustrator and draftsman. She began her professional career in the 1990s as co-editor of the comic magazines Spunk and Edition AOC. Since 1999 she has also worked as a cartoonist and wrote the sequel to Weltempfänger for the Berlin supplement of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). The illustration of books was added later. Today Menschik works as a freelance illustrator for the features section ofFrankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) and other German newspapers and magazines. She also illustrated several books such as The Mermaids of Estonia by Enn Vetemaa or Sleep and The Bakery Raids by Haruki Murakami .

Life

Youth and education

Kat Menschik was born in Luckenwalde in 1968 and grew up in East Berlin . First she learned to be a window dresser. From 1992 to 1999 she studied communication design at the Berlin University of the Arts and graduated as a master class student . From 1995 to 1996 she completed an exchange year at the Paris École des Arts Décoratifs , which was made possible by a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service . There she edited the monthly comic magazine Spunk together with fellow students . After her return to Berlin, she founded the comic publishing house Millions together with Jan Hülpüsch , which published the Edition AOC . The aim was to offer little-known artists a platform away from the mainstream. AOC appeared until 1999.

Work as an illustrator

From 1999 on, Menschik mainly worked as an illustrator and cartoonist. In that year she wrote the sequel to Weltempfänger for the FAZ's Berlin pages for four months . In 2000 she became the mother of a daughter. In the following year she worked again for the Berlin pages . Parallel to this, she worked at an illustration of a new edition of Enn Vetemaas The mermaids of Estonia , which was published in 2002 and Hans Magnus Enzensberger in the Other library was taken. The drawings were praised by the critics on the one hand, and on the other hand they were also criticized for their artistic proximity to Anke Feuchtenberger , who had also published a mermaid book a few years earlier.

In the same year, Menschik began working for the FAS features section, which she continues to illustrate to this day (2020). This was followed by illustrations for other German magazines such as Stern or Brigitte . Book illustrations took an increasingly important place in her work; From 2005 to 2011 she drew the pictures in Georgia Byng's Molly Moon , in 2007 for From one who went out to learn to fear by Arnhild Kantelhardt and in 2009 for Schlaf by Haruki Murakami . In 2007 she received the Troisdorf Picture Book Prize for her illustrations . Most recently she illustrated The Murder Fire of Örnolfsdalur, Tilman Spreckelsen's retelling of an Icelandic saga and in 2014 the Kalevala . A legend from the north, also retold by Spreckelsen.

On August 10, 2014, Menschik's partly large-format illustrations found space on nine pages of the FAS, including in the features section for several articles on the book The Circle by Dave Eggers .

The golden cultivator

Since March 5, 2013, the FAZ has published a total of 100 episodes of the sequel comic Der goldene Grubber from Tuesday to Friday , which, mostly in three pictures each, depicts the experiences of the author in her own, 4000 square meter garden or that of her neighbors east of Berlin portrays. The cartoons were published in 2014 by Galiani Verlag Berlin. The book art foundation named the volume “one of the most beautiful German books”. There was a contribution to this in the ZDF broadcast Aspects and in zibb on RBB . The weekly newspaper Der Freitag dedicated a special supplement to the book.

bibliography

Standalone book publications

• The variable calendar: 366 days. A perpetual calendar of world history. Add. with Andreas Platthaus . DuMont, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-8321-9690-5 .
• The golden cultivator. Of big moments and small failures in the garden year. Galiani, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86971-083-9 .

Book illustrations

• Enn Vetemaa : The mermaids of Estonia - an identification book . New edition. Translation: Günter Jäniche. Eichborn - The Other Library , Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 978-3-8218-4729-0 .
• Edmund Jacoby : Legends of antiquity. The manual of Greek sagas. Retold by Edmund Jacoby. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2008, ISBN 978-3-8369-5183-8 .
• Jacques Berndorf : The master student. Heyne, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-453-26643-8 .
• Haruki Murakami : Sleep . Narrative (translated by Nora Bierich). DuMont, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-8321-6136-1 .
• Ernst H. Gombrich : A Brief World History for Young Readers . Introduction by Leonie Lilavati Gombrich. 1st edition of the new edition, DuMont, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-8321-9653-0 .
• Tilman Spreckelsen : The murder fire of Örnulfsdalur and other Icelandic sagas. Galiani, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86971-046-4 .
• Haruki Murakami: The Bakery Raids . DuMont, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-8321-9636-3 ; as an e-book: ISBN 978-3-8321-8620-3 .
• Haruki Murakami: The Eerie Library . DuMont, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-8321-9717-9 .
• Tilman Spreckelsen: Kalevala: A legend from the north. Galiani, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86971-099-0 .
• Maria Antas: Wipe and away. A book about cleaning. From the Finnish Swedish by Ursel Allenstein , Insel Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-458-17629-9 .
• Mario Vargas Llosa : Sunday. Insel Verlag, Berlin 2016 (= Insel-Bücherei 2018), ISBN 978-3-458-20018-5 .
• Franz Kafka : A country doctor. Little stories. Designed and illustrated by Kat Menschik based on the text of the first edition. Galiani Berlin, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-86971-132-4 .
• William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet. After the translation, designed and illustrated by Kat Menschik. Galiani Berlin, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-86971-142-3 .
• Haruki Murakami: Birthday Girl . Narrative. Translated by Ursula Gräfe . Dumont, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-8321-9858-9 .
• ETA Hoffmann : The mines at Falun . Galiani, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86971-133-1 .
• Volker Kutscher : Moabit . Galiani Berlin, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-86971-155-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Kat Menschik in the catalog of the German National Library
• "Ink is good for the soul" Kat Menschik in an interview with Susanne Messmer in Die Tageszeitung (taz) on July 22, 2018.
• Kat Menschik - Homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry in the Munzinger archive , accessed on January 3, 2019
2. ↑ Burkhard Müller: The double mermaid. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 3, 2002.
3. ↑ Andreas Platthaus: Welcome to the Flower Friends Club. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . March 4, 2013, accessed on February 19, 2020 (The 100 published cartoons can also be reached from here). 
4. ↑ »The Most Beautiful German Books« 2014 are certain! Book Art Foundation , accessed on February 19, 2020 .  A link to download further information is provided on this page . Direct download of the list of the 25 most beautiful books 2014 .
5. ↑ Special supplement of Friday , edition 19/2014: Everything is enlightened: Joy for the eyes. The illustrator Kat Menschik has drawn a book that tells of the love for the garden (Jakob Augstein)