BERLIN – Hippies dance with the Beatles while the downstairs neighbor tries to get them to mute the music using their broom. A few circles up, a boy with bad teeth is waiting for the dentist. As the kids take over the elevator, the postman has to climb the stairs. A married couple has just moved in an apartment below the apartment of a man with a broken leg.
For Ali Mitgutsch, who passed away on January 10 in Munich at the age of 86, all these stories take place on a single page, each told with pictures, not words. And pages like him filled his children’s books.
They have lined the bookshelves of generations of children in Germany, where he has become a household name and is celebrated as the father of what the Germans call “Wimmelbuch” (meaning a source book). groups of people may contain visual jokes and anecdotes.
During his career, he has illustrated more than 70 books that have sold millions of copies and have been translated into 15 languages. He also produced puzzles and posters.
Their success has led to similar publishing phenomena, notably British illustrator Martin Hanford’s “Where’s Wally?” series. (“Where is Waldo in the USA?)
Its publisher, Ravensburger, attributed the death to complications from pneumonia.
“At Ali Mitgutsch we have lost a wonderful person and a wonderful illustrator,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a statement. “He made us laugh, think, and dream with his drawings—including me.”
Mitgutsch was an unknown illustrator when he came up with the trademark concept in 1968. His first book, “Rundherum in Meiner Stadt” (“In a Busy Town”), which soon became a series, contained large paintings of a city park. , a construction site, an apartment – where countless seemingly unrelated characters lead their daily lives. The book, still in print, won Germany’s prestigious youth book award, the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, in 1969.
“Cheeky, funny and endearing, he looked at the world and our human frailties,” said President Steinmeier, who in 2018 gave Mr. Mitgutsch the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany’s highest civilian honor.
Mitgutsch did not like the word “Wimmelbuch”, although his publisher used it in the titles of many of his later books. He preferred the term “self-explanatory picture book”. Indeed, texts in his books were rare; words were usually only found on markings within a picture.
In his memoirs, written with Ingmar Gregorzewski in 2015, Mitgutsch recalled lying awake in bed as a child during World War II, straining his ears and exercising his imagination, hungry for the hustle and bustle of working-class city life. Munich quarter. His drawings from a bird’s-eye perspective (usually from roughly the height of his childhood apartment on the third floor) gave views of everyday life that were both inclusive and intimate; reminded some critics of the Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel.
Alfons Mitgutsch was born on August 21, 1935, as the youngest of four children to Ludwig and Pauline Mitgutsch. Trained as a baker, his father became a railroad worker after injuring his hand in the First World War. Ali grew up in relative poverty in an apartment owned by his maternal grandfather until he was forced to sell it during Germany’s economic crisis. The turmoil of the 1920s.
Mitgutsch trained as a commercial illustrator before trying his hand at children’s books in the late 1950s. He released a few without much success before entering the format that would make him famous.
He is survived by his second wife, Heidi, whom he married after his first wife died; three children, Oliver, Florian and Katrin; and four grandchildren. His son Florian is also a children’s book illustrator.
Mitgutsch’s childhood memories were not all happy memories. suffered the aerial bombardments of Munich; his older brother, Ludwig, who was a hero to him, was killed while serving in the Wehrmacht in Russia. And Mr Mitgutsch said he suffers from severe dyslexia that has caused teachers to abuse him.
“His childhood was always the main theme of his inner life,” said Mr Gregorzewski. “She was never able to let go of him completely.”
“His art was his way of calling on other kids to come and play, and it has done children for generations,” he added.