Zurück nach Uskow. Von Janosch

With Andreas Jahncke

Everyone knows Janosch. The man created characters of worldwide renown - among them a yellow-and-black striped duck on wheels, the Tiger Duck, and of course her friend, the little Tiger. The two set out to travel the world and ended up right where they had always lived. Happy and content. Oh, how wonderful is Panama.

A work for children - and the moral? "Everyone has always lived in paradise, they just didn't know it," Janosch once told the Frankfurter Rundschau. A thought that keeps gaining new relevance today. Home. Where is that?

For Janosch, whose real name is Hans Eckert, home was once Zabrze in what is now Poland. He was born there in 1931, when the city still bore the name Hindenburg. The family fled to Germany in 1946, and over the decades little Hans became the great Janosch - that is what Johannes is called in Polish and Silesian. He wrote nearly 300 books, some translated into 70 languages. Alongside children's books he also wrote novels and stories for adults - and, as few people know, two stage plays.

One of them is the focus of Stalburg Theater: "Zurück nach Uskow". It tells the story of someone searching for their homeland. The autobiographical background is plain: Uskow is Zabrze, Janosch's birthplace. Whether the seeker arrives there or wanders like the little duck and the little tiger, Janosch tells in his own way - sometimes sharp, often prickly, occasionally melancholic, but always rooted in real life and laced with his characteristic wry humour.

Janosch turned 95 in March and has lived with his wife on Tenerife for three decades. Asked what he does there all day, he replied: "I think about the cheerful pointlessness of existence." That's Janosch.