Tamara Ramsay

Tamara Ramsay (born September 15, 1895 in Kiev ; † March 7, 1985 in Mühlacker ) was a German children's and youth author. Above all, she became known for her three-volume book for young people, The wonderful journeys and adventures of little Dott (1950/51), the first volume of which is based on a pre-war edition.

Life

Tamara Ramsay was born in Kiev in 1895 as the second of three children into the young family of an industrialist. Her father Karl Johann Ramsay, from a Baltic - Scottish family, was the administrative director of the Kiev rolling mills. Her mother Elisabeth was the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest and his wife of German and Danish descent. Her siblings were named Wladimir and Nina, who like Tamara were baptized Orthodox in accordance with their new home.

When Tamara's father suddenly died in 1901 at the age of 28 and the family's financial support was no longer secure, the young widow left Russia with her three children in 1905 and moved to Hamburg to live with relatives, where she and her children worked as an interpreter and piano teacher got through. While her siblings withdrew from domestic influence at an early age, Tamara developed according to maternal ideas into a "higher daughter" with a musical, literary and artistic education. She lived with her mother unmarried until her death in 1945.

In 1931 Tamara Ramsay published her first book entitled Die goldene Kugel , which she also illustrated herself. After moving to Berlin (1924?) She converted to the Catholic faith in 1932 .

Her youth book The wonderful journeys and adventures of little Dott , published in 1941 by Union-Verlag, was enthusiastically welcomed by the critics. Her ice age book Eliwagar (Union-Verlag 1939) was also praised .

Because of the bombing nights in 1943, she left Berlin with her mother and settled in Vorarlberg , where she probably did youth work as part of the church and campaigned for the beatification of a rape victim. In the post-war period, these activities quickly earned Tamara Ramsay the safety certificate from the authorities, which allowed her to move freely between the zones of occupation.

After her mother's death at the end of 1945, she went to Stuttgart , the headquarters of Cotta and Union publishers, which, however, was completely bombed in 1944. She now tried to perceive reality, to grasp the misery of the socially uprooted, the refugees, the Jews and the prisoners of war and to grapple with the guilt of the Germans. During these years she was always comforted by her Catholic faith.

Starting from the question of guilt, she dealt in the following decades with the development of humans in general and with the French Enlightenment. For these studies, at an advanced age (1969), she went to Paris for three months in order to be able to inspect original texts there at the Sorbonne . She managed to finish her manuscripts, but no publisher accepted the texts for printing.

In return, however, her successful book was taken up again by little Dott and continued with a second and third volume. The illustrations for the post-war editions were made by Alfred Seidel , who visualized the magically inspired character of the individual episodes with his black and white drawings. The book for young people was recommended for young people to read by the church, is said to have been part of the school libraries in Baden-Württemberg and was so popular that new editions followed again and again. The only translation was into Dutch, but only one edition was made there.

The other book for young people, Eliwagar, which was successful in 1939 - the Ice Age Book was shortened in 1958 as a non-fiction book under the title Kel - published among the Ice Age hunters between steppe and tundra . Both works became the basis for many radio broadcasts and readings. As the only new work after the Second World War, its translation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales with illustrations by Alfred Seidel was accepted by the publisher and published.

With increasing age and growing frailty, Tamara Ramsay withdrew more and more from the public and died on March 7, 1985 at the age of 89 in Mühlacker near Stuttgart.

Works

The wonderful journeys and adventures of little Dott is Ramsay's only work that has attracted greater attention and has appeared in several editions and versions adapted to the current trend. The first edition appeared in three volumes. The children's book author Otfried Preußler campaigned for a new edition at the end of the 1950s, until it was finally published as a one-volume edition by dtv as a “children's book classic”.

In this book for young people, Tamara Ramsay combines fairy tale and legend motifs from different regions, follows in large parts of the book the template of “Nils Holgersson's wonderful journey with the wild geese” by Selma Lagerlöf and integrates historical, geographical and biological knowledge to the journey of the little Dott into a textbook for German youth. The work appears instructively dry in places, especially in its two subsequent volumes. The depiction of historical events, enhanced into a fairytale-like, even mystical, may seem strange, at least to the adult readership today. On the other hand, in the undisguised partisanship for the animal and plant world, there are approaches to a nature conservation idea that could only penetrate the general consciousness 30 to 40 years later.

Since November 16, 2007, the first volume of the “Wonderful journeys and adventures of the little Dott” has been published by prignitz-pur Verlag. It is currently out of print. The idea for this new edition came from Monika Schmid-Welter, Tamara Ramsays' goddaughter. The second volume was published on November 24, 2008. It contains volumes two and three of the first edition. Volume 2 of this last reprint is also already sold out. The prignitz-pur publishing house has meanwhile stopped its activities. On December 11, 2012, an English-language one-volume edition was published as a paperback by Two Harbors Press .

The accompanying audio book has been published since November 30, 2007 under the title “Die kleine Dott”, Part 1 Die Midsummer Night . The second part, In Frau Harkes Reich , has been published since November 29, 2008. The premiere of the third part, The Flight with the Heron, took place on December 1, 2012. This type of new edition was also carried out in collaboration with Monika Schmid-Welter. The producer and publisher is the listening tower based in Perleberg .

Illustrations

• My slate-board picture book , Löwensohn-Verlag Fürth (around 1920)
• Hoppel-Poppel by Frida Schanz (around 1920)
• The Sky Hospital (around 1920)
• D 'year clock by Emmy Lang, Francke-Verlag, Bern (around 1930)
• Kinderland. What humans and animals know to tell By IM Jünemann, Borgmeyer-Verlag Hildesheim (around 1930)
• Animal radio by Sophie Reinheimer, Schneider-Verlag, Leipzig (1932)
• Of flowers, trees and happy fellows. Stories and rhymes , Perthes-Verlag, Stuttgart (1934)
• The pretzel bush by Hubert Göbels , Herder-Verlag Freiburg (1936)
• Wilhelm Matthiesen's old house with drawings by Tamara Ramsay, Herder-Verlag, Freiburg (1936)
• Germanic fairy tale book by Erich Wolf with 100 drawings by Tamara Ramsay, Diederichs-Verlag, Jena (1937)

Stories with your own illustrations

• The Golden Ball , fairy tales and stories with 63 pictures by the author, Perthes-Verlag, Stuttgart (1931)
• Wonderful journeys and adventures of little Dott with 90 drawings, Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart (1941). Unabridged new edition with the author's original drawings in two volumes in Prignitz-Pur-Verlag, Meyenburg 2007, 2008, ISBN 978-3-0002-2568-0 / ISBN 978-3-0002-5570-0 .
• Eliwagar - The Ice Age Book , Union-Verlag, Stuttgart (1939)
• Wonderful journeys and adventures of little Dott - promise with 220 drawings, Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart (1943)

Stories / texts with or without your own illustrations

• Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, The Poets of the Germans , Cotta-Verlag, Stuttgart (1938)
• Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Her life in her poetry , Port-Verlag, Urach (1948)
• Revision of the small Dott , drawings by Alfred Seidel (1950)
• Bd. II der kleine Dott , drawings by Alfred Seidel (1950)
• Vol. III of the small Dott drawings by Alfred Seidel (1951)
• Revision and shortening of Eliwagar , now published as Kel , Union (1958)

Translations

• Translation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, Union-Verlag, Stuttgart (1955)

Unpublished texts

• Eva Buchmann
• Melita Maschmann conclusion
• The last chance
• Buffon and the French Enlightenment
• But most powerful is the human being

Web links

• Literature by and about Tamara Ramsay in the catalog of the German National Library