Astrid Lindgren

With a total circulation of around 165 million books (as of February 2019), she is one of the best-known authors of children's and young adult books in the world. Her works have been published all over the world and in 106 different languages, making her one of the most translated authors. In Germany, with a total circulation of well over 20 million copies, she is more successful than almost any other author of children's and young adult books. The writer is the spiritual mother of Pippi Longstocking, Michel from Lönneberga, Ronja the Robber's Daughter, Madita, Mio, Kalle Blomquist, Karlsson from the Roof, the children from Bullerby and many other characters.

She was born as the second child of Samuel August Ericsson (1875–1969) and his wife Hanna Ericsson née Jonsson (1879–1961) and had an older brother, Gunnar (1906–1974), and two younger sisters, Stina (1911–2002) and Ingegerd (1916–1997). She has always described her childhood as particularly happy.

In 1914 Astrid started school in Vimmerby. According to the custom of the time, for children of simple people, the actual school days were over after only three years. Only rich middle-class children attended secondary school, because you had to pay 23 crowns per half-year. The parents of Astrid's girlfriend were able to convince the Ericsson couple to continue their daughter's secondary schooling. In the following six years, the hard-working and talented student learned mainly languages: English, French and German. In 1923 she graduated from school with the intermediate exam and worked as a housedaughter according to her mother's wishes.

One day, the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper ("Vimmerby Tidning") offered the young woman to work as a trainee at the newspaper. Astrid immediately accepted the offer, cycling every day from Näs to the nearby small town and learning the journalistic trade from scratch. She had to research, proofread and write short reports. During this time, at the age of eighteen, she became pregnant. She could not marry the father of her child, the owner and editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Reinhold Blomberg, who was significantly older than her and already the father of seven other children, even if she had wanted to, because he had not yet divorced his wife of many years. Later, she rejected his marriage proposal. Astrid Ericsson left Näs and moved to Stockholm. There she trained as a secretary and found support from the lawyer Eva Andén, who campaigned for the rights of young women. On December 4, 1926, she secretly gave birth to her son Lars (called Lasse, died 1986) in Copenhagen. Through the mediation of the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, the only Scandinavian clinic that did not pass on official reports of births, he was initially placed with a foster family in Copenhagen for three years. Her desperate empathy for her small, abandoned son became just as important a writing inspiration for Astrid Ericsson as her own happy childhood, according to her friend and biographer Margareta Strömstedt.In 1927, Astrid Ericsson took up her first position in Stockholm at the Swedish Bookselling Centre ("Svenska Bokhandelscentralen") as the successor to Zarah Leander, who later became very well known as an actress and singer. Automobile Club" ("Kungliga Automobilklubben"), where her future husband Sture Lindgren worked as an office manager. He was an alcoholic and died in 1952 in his mid-50s, making Astrid Lindgren a widow at a very early age.

In 1930, Lasse's foster mother fell ill, whereupon Astrid Ericsson brought him to Stockholm. The following spring she brought him to her parents in Näs, and she and Sture Lindgren decided to marry. With him and her son, the young secretary moved to Vulcanusgatan in the Vasaviertel (Vasastaden) in Stockholm. On May 21, 1934, their daughter Karin was born, who later became known as a translator under the name Karin Nyman.

From 1937 Lindgren worked as a stenographer for the Swedish professor of criminology, Harry Söderman, and from 1940 in the department of letter censorship of the Swedish Intelligence Service. On September 1, 1939 – the day World War II began with the German invasion of Poland – she began to write "war diaries". The diaries were published after Lindgren's death under the title Mankind Has Lost the Mind. Her secret work in the intelligence service until the end of the war gave her deep insights into the events of the war around the world.

In 1933, Astrid Lindgren published two Christmas stories – anonymously in Stockholms Tidningen the story "Jultomtens underbara bildradio" and under her name in Landsbygdens Jul the story "Johans äventyr på julafton" (Johans äventyr på julafton). In the following years, she published one or two short stories a year in magazines.

Astrid Lindgren published her first book, entitled Fem automobilturer i Sverige, in 1939, as part of her work at the Motormännens Riksförbund (German Reich Association of Motor Drivers). It was a travel book about five car trips through Sweden. These reports were republished in 1949 in the book 25 bilturer i Sverige. However, Lindgren had expanded the book with twenty additional tours. This book has been translated into both German (25 car tours in Sweden, also 25 car tours in Sweden) and English (25 automobile tours in Sweden).

It was not until the mid-1940s that Astrid Lindgren increasingly turned to writing. This happened rather by chance. Originally, she never intended to become a writer.

Astrid Lindgren invented the stories about Pippi Longstocking for her daughter Karin. This happened from the winter of 1941, when the daughter was sick in bed and had come up with the name Pippi Longstocking. The manuscript was a birthday present for Karin.

In March 1944, Lindgren submitted a carbon copy to the Swedish publishing house "Albert Bonniers Förlag". This story about the cheeky sailor's daughter Pippi Longstocking was rejected. In 1944, she also took part in a competition held by Rabén & Sjögren. The competition for the best girl's book was linked to the demand that the text should promote love for family and home as well as a sense of responsibility towards the opposite sex. Astrid Lindgren wrote Britt-Mari relieved her heart, which won second place in the competition. The 15-year-old protagonist of the book relieves her heart in the form of an epistolary novel. She is remarkably self-reliant and independent – also and especially vis-à-vis the opposite sex.

Inspired by her first success, the prize winner submitted the revised manuscript of Pippi Longstocking to "Rabén & Sjögren" the following year and this time won first prize. The very first Pippi drawing was made by the author herself. In the same year, the publisher Hans Rabén hired Lindgren as a part-time editor. She built up the children's book department and worked in the publishing house until her retirement in 1970. Since then, her daily routine has been such that she wrote her own books early in the morning, still lying in bed. Shortly before 1 p.m., she came to the publishing house and had conversations with "authors, editors, reviewers, translators, illustrators, proofreaders, typesetters and booksellers" in person and on the phone. In the evenings, she read manuscripts submitted at home and new foreign publications. The first Swedish edition of Pippi Longstocking was illustrated by Danish artist Ingrid Vang Nyman. In the autumn of 1949, Astrid Lindgren's debut work was also published in Germany, after the writer had met the Hamburg publisher Friedrich Oetinger. To this day, the German editions of her works are published by Friedrich Oetinger Verlag. The first German Pippi Longstocking was illustrated by Walter Scharnweber. The young readers liked Pippi Longstocking's unconventional behaviour: like no other character, this red-haired girl embodies the Lindgrenian type of the active, self-confident, self-determined, creative and shrewd child. Pippi Longstocking's Elevator alone can be interpreted as a parody of the stereotypes of the girls' or backfish book of the time. Pippi Longstocking is Lindgren's most widely distributed book, it has been translated into 70 languages. Oetinger published Pippi Longstocking in the Federal Republic of Germany, although the book was still highly controversial even in Sweden at the time and had previously been rejected by five other German publishers. Since he later published all of Lindgren's other works, his publishing house became a pioneer of Scandinavian children's literature in the Federal Republic of Germany. His daughter Silke Weitendorf reports in an interview that there was praise and criticism in response to Pippi Longstocking's appearance on the German market. For example, reviewers have expressed concerns that Pippi is not "normal" and a bad role model for children.

The political leadership in East Germany was suspicious of Lindgren's characters, but four of her children's books were published in the GDR. All were published by Kinderbuchverlag Berlin. Mio, mein Mio was published in 1960, Lillebror und Karlsson vom Dach in 1971, Pippi Longstocking in 1975 and Ronja Räubertochter in 1988. The design of these printed products was very simple and partly only paperback and with East German illustrations. As far as is known, there was only one first edition at a time.Astrid Lindgren preferred to put her works on paper in shorthand first, so that they were completely available on shorthand pads before they were typed. She took stenography in bed or in summer on the balcony of her holiday home, a former pilot house on Furusund near Stockholm, which she had taken over from her parents-in-law in 1947. She changed the individual sentences very often until she was finally satisfied with the speech melody. For a long time, she also did the typing herself, and there were no more corrections during the copying phase. Since an eye operation in 1986, she had to use felt-tip pens for stenography so that she could read her handwriting.In 1974, the Swedish television nation was amused by her when she climbed a tree with her friend Elsa Olenius for her 80th birthday. After all, there is "no ban on old women climbing trees". The list of film adaptations of her books includes (between 1947 and 2007) seventy titles; However, Lindgren always retained control and marketing rights over the films.

Astrid Lindgren lived from 1941 until her death at Dalagatan 46 in the Vasa district in Stockholm. Her home now bears the sign: Astrid Lindgren's Hem 1941–2002. In 1965 she received the Swedish State Prize for Literature and in the same year she bought the house where she was born in Näs. In Germany alone, 90 schools bear the name of the well-known Swede, who actively campaigned for human rights, especially children's rights and animal welfare, throughout her life.

She also critically followed the increasing propensity for violence among children and adolescents. In 1995, for example, the Swedish daily newspaper Expressen published an article showing Astrid Lindgren together with the skinhead Niklas S., with whom she sought a conversation.

Astrid Lindgren maintained a large number of close friendships throughout her life, which lasted for decades. She wrote and received countless letters from her friends, which, along with her diaries, are the most important sources for her life. Elsa Olenius met her in 1944 at the publishing house Rabén & Sjögren. Olenius also ran a children's theatre and was friends with the only two important reviewers of children's literature in Sweden, Eva von Zweigbergk and Greta Bolin. Olenius, von Zweigbergk and Bolin also formed the juries of all important children's prizes in the country. Lindgren was strongly encouraged by the three friends in her beginnings and subsequently became a close friend herself. In 1971, Sara Ljungcrantz, who was twelve years old at the time, wrote her a letter that resulted in an exchange of letters that lasted until 2002, which was published in 2012 as a book – Deine Briefe lege ich unter die Matratze (I put your letters under the mattress). Since 1953, Lindgren had been friends with the German Louise Hartung, an employee of the youth welfare office in West Berlin. From the letters that both wrote until Hartung's death in 1965, it is clear that the two maintained a close, intellectually stimulating and loving friendship, whereby Hartung also wanted to enter into a sexual relationship with Lindgren, but Lindgren was not willing to do so. A selection of the letters has been published in the book I have also lived! published. Also in the 1950s, the tradition of "women's lunches" emerged, where Lindgren met friends from the literary industry for dinner. Her sisters Ingegerd and Stina were always guests there, and since the 1970s her biographer Margareta Strömstedt has also belonged to the circle.

In 1973, The Brothers of the Lionheart became the subject of a debate in the Swedish parliament because the saga of death and nothing but death contained in it supposedly glorified suicide. Lindgren was a member of the association "The Right to Our Death", which campaigned to end one's own life in the event of an incurable ailment.

Lindgren often campaigned for children's rights and animal rights. A law passed in 1988 on animal rights controls in factory farming is also attributed to their influence. In addition, she opposed the system of racial segregation in the USA with the book Kati in America (1950). She was also a member of the Swedish Social Democrats since the 1930s.

There was a break with the government led by the Social Democrats in 1976: Due to a mistake in the Swedish tax law, some self-employed people had to pay taxes both as employees and as self-employed, so that the marginal tax rate rose to over 100 percent with a corresponding annual income with other taxes. Lindgren, who otherwise supported the Swedish tax system, then wrote the article Pomperipossa in Monismania in Expressen in protest. Finance Minister Gunnar Sträng reacted defensively and only later admitted the error. Lindgren then called for the Social Democrats to be voted out of office in order to strengthen democracy, even though she herself was a member. They have been in government for too long and have thus become more undemocratic. Her appeal was used by the Folkpartiet party for election campaign purposes, but she clearly distanced herself from this. In the next election, the Social Democratic government, last eight years under Olof Palme, was voted out of office after more than 40 years. Lindgren's protest is partly seen as a major cause.

In 1978, Lindgren was the first children's book author to be awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. On the occasion of the award ceremony, she gave a speech under the motto "Never violence!" in Frankfurt's Paulskirche, in which she urged the non-violent upbringing of children. On 9 December 1994, she received the honorary prize of the Right Livelihood Award ("Alternative Nobel Prize") in the parliament in Stockholm "for her unique literary activity, which she dedicates to children's rights and respect for their individuality".In 1996, Lindgren was awarded the "Golden Ark" by the umbrella organisation of European animal welfare associations for her tireless fight for better animal welfare law in her country. Astrid Lindgren retained her youthful sense of humor into old age. This was also evident at the Swede of the Year award ceremony in 1997. She addressed the audience with the following remark: "You are awarding the prize to a person who is ancient, half blind, half deaf and totally crazy. We have to be careful that word doesn't get around." Astrid Lindgren died on 28 January 2002 as a result of a viral infection at the age of 94 in her Stockholm apartment Dalagatan 46, where she had lived for over 60 years. At the commemoration ceremony on March 8, 2002 in Stockholm's Storkyrkan, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in addition to the royal family and the prime minister. Behind her coffin, which lay on a catafalque, walked a girl and a white horse. She found her final resting place in Vimmerby in Småland in southern Sweden.