Roald Dahl

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Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal , 1954 (photography by Carl van Vechten )

Roald Dahl [ ˈroʊ.ɑːl ˈdɑːl ] (born September 13, 1916 in Llandaff near Cardiff , Wales , † November 23, 1990 in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford) was a British writer . He wrote novels and short stories , which are based on a fine black humor and which often end surprisingly. He is known for his children's books as well as for works that are more likely to be assigned to the genre of black or macabre humor . Dahl sold more than 200 million books worldwide; his works have been translated into 63 languages.

Life

Origin and education

Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff in South Wales to Sofie Magdalene Dahl, née Hesselberg, and Harald Dahl; both parents were of Norwegian descent. It was named after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen . He grew up bilingual with English and Norwegian, and spoke Norwegian with his parents and sisters Astri, Alfhild and Else. His four year-old sister Astri died in 1920 at the age of seven years at an appendicitis , a few weeks later, his father died at the age of 57 years at a pneumonia . His mother still wanted to stay in Wales instead of moving back to the relatives in Norway. Roald Dahl often spent the summer holidays in Norway, which he later in Boy. Tales of Childhood , like his school days, which was marked by excessive violence.

He started school at Llandaff Cathedral School . However, after a prank in which he and four friends hid a dead mouse in a candy pot of a trader, Roald was punished by the headmaster, whereupon his mother took him from school. At nine he was a student at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Weston-super-Mare , at thirteen at Repton School in Derbyshire , where he was the captain of the Fives team, the squash team and also played football. Here he also developed his interest in photography . At the age of 18 he won prizes from the Royal Photography Society and the Photographic Society of Holland . Repton schoolchildren regularly received chocolate from the Cadbury company for test purposes , which is likely to have been the inspiration for Dahl's second children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory .

After finishing school, he spent three weeks in Newfoundland , which he toured on foot with a group from the Public Schools Exploring Society . Contrary to the expectations of his mother, who would have preferred a career at the university, in June 1934 he completed a commercial apprenticeship with the Shell Oil Company in order to be deployed abroad if he wished. From 1936 he worked for Shell in Dar es Salaam . He learned Swahili in a few months and traveled to Tanganyika as part of his professional activity . An astonishing incident with a lion, which he reported as an eyewitness, was published as his first literary work in the East African Standard .

The second World War

Roald Dahl's leather flight helmet

When World War II was imminent in August 1939 and tensions arose in Tanganyika, the fifteen or so British living in Dar es Salaam were appointed officers of the King's African Rifles . Dahl briefly commanded an Askaris troop .

In November he joined the Royal Air Force and began training as a pilot in a de Havilland Tiger Moth, which is used as a training aircraft in Nairobi, 600 miles away . After only 7 hours and 40 minutes of flight experience, he was allowed to fly alone. Further training took place at RAF Camp Habbaniyya , 89 km west of Baghdad. After six months of flight service in a Hawker Hart , he was appointed acting pilot officer and assigned to the 80th Squadron .

For the transfer to his new unit he received a Gloster Gladiator , which was already obsolete before the war . On September 19, 1940, Dahl flew from Abu Suweir in Egypt to Amiriya for refueling and then to Fouka in Libya for another refueling stop. From there he flew to the 80th Squadron airfield , which, according to the commanding officer, should be 30 miles south of Mersa Matruh . Since it was misinformation and the airfield could not be found, Dahl had to make an emergency landing in the desert due to a lack of fuel. The chassis of his machine hit a rock, it overturned and went up in flames. Despite a serious head injury, he was able to save himself from the plane before he lost consciousness.

Dahl was rescued and treated in Marsa Matruh, where he regained consciousness but was initially unable to see due to the facial injuries. Further treatment took place at the Royal Navy Hospital in Alexandria . After five months, he left the hospital completely fit to fly.

The 80th Squadron had meanwhile been relocated to Elefsis near Athens and supported the British Expeditionary Force against the Axis Powers without much hope of success. In April 1941 Dahl flew with the new Hawker Hurricane across the Mediterranean to his unit, which consisted of only 14 other hurricanes and should suffer further losses in the next few days.

Dahl had his first combat experience on April 15, 1941 over Chalkis , where he met six Junkers Ju 88s and scored his first kill. On April 20, he took part in the "Battle of Athens" in which the remaining 12 hurricanes encountered a superior force of around 200 German aircraft, mostly Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Bf 110 , of which they were able to shoot down 22 machines. Dahl survived the loss-making fight and was initially relocated to Libya with his pilot, David Coke. The 80th season had been relocated to Haifa , from where Dahl completed other missions. As he suffered increasingly from severe headaches, he was disabled and returned to England. Later, he processed his experiences in the autobiographical Going Solo (in German translation: "In single entry")

After serving in military intelligence, he ended the war with the rank of Wing Commander .

In 1942 he was transferred to Washington, DC , where he was Assistant Air Attache . As is now known, Dahl also worked in the USA as an agent for the British secret service. He also began writing here and published the story Shot Down Over Libya in the Saturday Evening Post on August 1, 1942 , in which he described his crash with the Gloster Gladiator. The original title, A Piece of Cake , had been changed to further dramatize the report through implied enemy contact. In fact, the crash was not caused by enemy action. This short story is next to Lucky Break (German translation: "How I became a writer") from 1977 one of the few autobiographical by Dahl.

the post war period

Roald Dahl, October 13, 1982

On July 2, 1953, Roald Dahl married Hollywood actress Patricia Neal in New York . The marriage, which lasted 30 years, had five children;

  • Olivia Twenty (April 20, 1955 to November 17, 1962); Olivia died of measles at the age of seven . He dedicated two of his children's books to her;
  • Theo Matthew (born 1960);
  • Ophelia Magdalena (born 1964);
  • Lucy Dahl, born in 1965, wrote the screenplay for Wild Child .

After divorcing Patricia Neal, Roald Dahl married his girlfriend Felicity Ann Crosland (née d'Abreu), known as Liccy, in 1983. Liccy moved in with him in the "Gipsy House" in Buckinghamshire, which he had lived in since 1954.

Seven years later, on November 23, 1990, Roald Dahl died at the age of 74 at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford of acute myeloid leukemia . Even after his death, Felicity Dahl took care of the Roald Dahl Foundation, which continued his charitable work in the areas of neurology, hematology and the fight against illiteracy after his death. In June 2005, the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Store opened in Great Missenden to celebrate Dahl's work. In his memory, the Roald Dahl Children's Gallery was opened at the Bucks County Museum (near Aylesbury ).

Roald Dahl in the garden of Gipsy House in September 1990, Image: Jürgen Wieshoff

Artistic creation

Roald Dahl signs children's books - Amsterdam , October 12, 1988

Roald Dahl wrote his very first short story, The Kumbak II, when he was 10. It remained unpublished. The original manuscript was shown to visitors in 2016 (Roald Dahl's 100th birthday) at Penguin Books . Inspired by a meeting with CS Forester , Dahl published his first story in the Saturday Evening Post for a fee of $ 1,000.

His first children's book was The Gremlins in 1943 ; it was about small, vicious creatures that are part of folklore within the Royal Air Force. This story was commissioned by Walt Disney to turn it into a film, but it was never realized. Dahl wrote some of the most popular children's books of the 20th century, for example Danny or The Pheasant Hunt or The Fantastic Mr. Fox . His books were often used as models for film adaptations, such as Matilda , James and the giant peach , Witches witches and Charlie and the chocolate factory . Quentin Blake illustrated many of his children's books .

Dahl wrote two autobiographies , Boy (1984) and Im Alleingang (1986 ), as well as the two autobiographical short stories Ein Kinderspiel (1942, see above) and How I became a writer (1977).

In addition to children's books, he also wrote macabre short stories for adults, usually with dark humor and a surprising ending. The best known are contained in kisses, kisses and in the sequel ... and another kiss . Many were written for US magazines, e.g. B. the Ladies' Home Journal , Harper’s , Playboy and The New Yorker . Combined in anthologies, they increased the author's fame. In total he wrote over 70 short stories.

One of his most famous adult stories, The Smoker (also known as Man from the South ), was made into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and was also used as a segment in Quentin Tarantino's Four Rooms from 1995. The English television series Tales of the Unexpected , which began in 1979, adapted many of his stories. Two of his short stories and the novel Uncle Oswald and the Sudan Beetle are excerpts from the diary of his fictional uncle Oswald, a wealthy gentleman whose sexual debauchery forms the basis of these stories. Great popularity also reached the macabre short story The Landlady ( the landlady ) (published 1959).

In the 1960s, Dahl also wrote some screenplays to make money. Two of them, the James Bond film You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , were adaptations of novels by Ian Fleming . He adapted his own work for the 1971 version by Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory .

Memories with Food at Gipsy House , which he wrote with his wife Felicity and which was published posthumously in 1991, is a mixture of recipes, family memories and reflections on favorite Dahl subjects like chocolate, onions and Bordeaux wine.

Accusation of anti-Semitism

After publishing a literary review for Literary Review magazine , Dahl was labeled anti-Semitic and heavily criticized in Israel and several other countries. He later said that this was probably why he was never knighted by the queen. In an interview on the subject of the 1982 Lebanon War , he said:

“There's a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity […] I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason. "

“There is a trait in the Jewish character that provokes aversion [...] By that I mean, there is always a reason why anti-anything arises somewhere; even a good-for-nothing like Hitler picked on them for a reason. "

Dahl openly admitted:

"I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic."

In a book review in the newspaper "Literary Review" he referred to the powerful American Jewish bankers ("those powerful American Jewish bankers") and accused the US government of being completely ruled by the Jewish financial institutions.

Israeli military actions in Lebanon are being covered up in the press, since this is also primarily in Jewish hands: "there aren't any non-Jewish publishers anywhere." (ibid.)

Also with regard to the Lebanon war, Dahl said one wonders, "What kind of people these Israelis are in the end. It reminds of the good old days of Hitler and Himmler. (" Makes one wonder in the end what sort of people these Israelis are. It is like the good old Hitler and Himmler times all over again. ”, ibid.)

In an interview with Deutschlandfunk Amelia Foster, the director of the Roald Dahl Museum and History Center in Great Missenden, said:

“It was stupid of him to say such a thing. He was very angry with the Israelis and then he wrote something down - it's a childlike reaction to what was going on in Israel. And then he also relates that to the Second World War, that was just stupid of him! But I'm sure he didn't really believe that. Dahl wanted to provoke, just as he always liked to provoke at dinner. His publisher was Jewish, his agent was Jewish, he could have lost them all in no time. But he liked these people, he respected them and thought only good things of them. He asked me to be his manager, and I'm Jewish too. You don't ask people to work for you when you're anti-Semitic. This is another example of how much Dahl refused to take anything seriously, including himself. "

Awards and honors

See also

Works (in selection)

Children's books

Children's poems

Collections of short stories

Over to You - front cover of the first edition from 1946

Novels

Scripts

Autobiographies / letters

Adaptations

Movie

musical

literature

  • Anja Betke: Roald Dahl. Black humor in children's and youth literature. Stuttgart 1991: Diploma thesis (FH)
  • Karen von Homeyer: Non-mimetic elements and their functions in children's literature by Roald Dahl. Erlangen-Nuremberg 1994: Mag.-Arb.
  • Wendy Mass: Great authors of children's literature. San Diego (Calif.) 2000: Lucent Books. ISBN 1-56006-589-3 .
  • Maja Mores: Roald Dahl's children's books - controversial with adults, popular with children. In: Youth Literature. Cham. 3/4. 1991, pp. 40-44.
  • Vic Parker: Roald Dahl. 2nd Edition. Oxford 2004: Heinemann Library. ISBN 0-431-17981-6 .
  • Susan Kreller : The core of the peach. Roald Dahl's children's literary work in German. Leipzig 2000: Mag. Arb.
  • Jeremy Treglown: Roald Dahl. A biography. London u. a. 1994: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-16573-7 .
  • Alan Warren: Roald Dahl. San Bernardino 1990: Borgo Press (= Starmont contemporary writers. 1). ISBN 1-55742-013-0 .
  • Mark I. West: Roald Dahl. New York et al. a. 1992: Twayne et al. a. (= Twayne's English authors series. 492). ISBN 0-8057-7019-4 .
  • Jennet Conant: The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime. Washington 2008: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-9458-4 .
  • Donald Sturrock: Storyteller: the life of Roald Dahl. London 2010: HarperPress. ISBN 978-0-00-725476-7 .
  • Manfred Orlick: From leg of lamb and giant peach - Roald Dahl (already now) for the 100th In: Das Blättchen. Biennial for politics, art and business, Volume 19, Number 19/2016, September 12, 2016, pp. 22–23.

Web links

Commons : Roald Dahl  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Sources and Notes

  1. ↑ BBC article, July 6, 2015
  2. ↑ According to the Cardiff Times article on March 7, 2019
  3. ↑ Overview of languages ​​(selection)
  4. ↑ Donald Sturrock: Roald Dahl's schooldays , telegraph.co.uk, August 8, 2010, accessed November 9, 2019.
  5. ↑ Freedom in Exchange: On the Death of Patricia Neal. (sueddeutsche.de)
  6. ↑ List of all over 70 known short stories - multiple responses were taken into account in the count due to different titles.
  7. ↑ Die Welt : Roald Dahl (1916–1990). November 13, 2006.
  8. ↑ The Schmooze : [1] September 13, 2016.
  9. ↑ Deutschlandfunk : In the chocolate factory. November 16, 2008.
Roald Dahl


Children's novels

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory  (1964) • The Magic Finger (1966) • The Fantastic Mr. Fox  (1970) • Charlie and the Big Glass Elevator  (1972) • Danny or The Pheasant Hunt  (1975) • The Giant Crocodile  (1978) • The Zwicks stand upside down  (1980) • The miracle cure (1981) • Sophiechen and the giant  (1982) • Witches witches  (1983) • The giraffe, the Peli and I (1985) • Matilda  (1988) • Otto's secret (1990) • The Konrad with the Ititty (1991) • The Pastor of Nibbleswick (1992)

Children's poems

Revolting Rhymes  (1982) • Dirty Beasts (1983) • Reimtopf (1989)

Novels

Some Time Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948) • Uncle Oswald and the Sudan Beetle  (1979)

Autobiographies

Boy - beautiful and terrible things from my childhood (1984) • On my own. My experiences abroad (1986)

personal data
SURNAME Dahl, Roald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Welsh writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Llandaff near Cardiff
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1990
Place of death Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire