Paul Maar
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Paul Maar became known to a wide audience with his stories about Sams. His other great successes include Lippel's Dream and Mr. Bello and the Blue Wonder. He has received numerous awards for his books for children and young people, including the German Youth Literature Prize (1996). His books repeatedly allude to works from the literary canon, including fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. Maar also works as an illustrator, screenwriter and playwright.
Image: Bodow (Wikimedia Commons; CC-BY-SA-4.0)This year, the Kassel Grimm Poetics Professorship will be more closely integrated into the research and teaching activities of the University's Institute of German Studies than ever before. In the coming summer semester, more than twenty courses in literature, linguistics and didactics will focus on the topic of "Children, Literature and Language".
Prof. Dr. Nikola Roßbach from the Institute of German Studies explained Maar's choice: "Children's and young adult literature is often only considered from a pedagogical perspective: What is the child supposed to learn from it? Paul Maar shows how multi-layered, sophisticated and genuinely literary children's books can be," she said. "He is the most important living German children's book author; we and our university are honored that he has accepted the Grimm Poetics Professorship." Her colleague Dr. Andreas Wicke, who researches and teaches in the field of children's and young adult literature, emphasized the diverse references in Maar's texts: "They tie in with the narrative literature of German Romanticism as well as international literature. There are also repeated allusions to or adaptations of motifs from Grimm's fairy tales."
