James Krüss

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James Krüss (May 31, 1926 - August 2, 1997) was a German poet and writer.

James Jacob Hinrich Krüss was born as as the son of the electrician Ludwig Krüss and his wife Margaretha Krüss (born Friedrichs) on Heligoland. In 1941, during World War II, the inhabitants of the island were evacuated to Arnstadt, Thuringia, later to Hertigswalde, near Sebnitz, Saxony. After finishing high school in 1943, he studyed to become a teacher, first in Lunden until 1943, Schleswig-Holstein, then in Ratzeburg until 1944, then finally in Brunswick. In 1944, he was drafted into the air force and was stationed in Ústí nad Labem, now Czech Republic at the end of World War II.

From 1945 he lived with his parents in Cuxhaven. In 1946, he published his first book, Der goldene Faden and then visited the college of education in Lüneburg, Lower Saxony. In 1948, he received his teaching license, but never worked as a teacher. In the same year, he moved to Reinbek, near Hamburg, and founded the magazine Helgoland, which was meant for inhabitants of the island, who had been expelled from it; it existed until 1956. In 1949, he moved to Lochham, near Munich, where he got to know Erich Kästner, among others.

From 1956, he wrote audio dramas for children and children's poems together with Peter Hacks. In 1956, Krüss published the children's book The Lighthouse on Lobster Cliffs in the publishing house Friedrich Oetinger. He also travelled to Italy and Yugoslavia. After a reading of My Great Grandfather and I in the Tagesschau in 1960, he suddenly became very famous. In the same year he bought a house with garden in Gilching, Bavaria. In 1962, his arguably most famous book Timm Thaler was published. It would later be turned into a mini-tv series in 1978 directed by Sigi Rothemund, which was also known as The Boy Who Lost His Laugh in the UK. In 1965, he bought a house in Gran Canaria and settled there a year later.

At the end of his life, Krüss had heart problems and spent a lot of time in clinics. He died in 1997 in Gran Canaria and was buried at sea on September 27 near Heligoland.