Robert Gernhardt

Robert Gernhardt (b. December 13 1937, Reval (Tallinn), Estonia - d. June 30 2006, Frankfurt am Main) was a German writer, painter caricaturist and poet. He used the pseudonym Lützel Jeman.

Robert Gernhardt studied Painting and German in Stuttgart and Berlin. He was one of the regular contributors to the satirical magazine "Pardon", where he did the section "Welt im Spiegel" together with F. K. Waechter and F.W. Bernstein.

Gernhardt co-founded the satirical magazine "Titanic" in 1979. He is part of the so-called New Frankfurt School together with artists like Hans Traxler, Chlodwig Poth and F. K. Waechter. Gernhardt’s satirical style combines social critique with a self-consciously irreverential attitude to cultural and literary traditions.

His poetry and prose are situated within the comic traditions of Wilhelm Busch, Joachim Ringelnatz and Christian Morgenstern and the urban poetry of Heinrich Heine and Bertolt Brecht. Gernhardt's poems, which frequently produce their comic effects through play with language and sound as well as through playfully quoting literary tradition, have become part of public consciousness in Germany.

During the '70s and '80s, he wrote material for Otto Waalkes, one of Germany's most popular comedians. A lot of Waalkes' most famous routines have been written by Gernhardt.

In 2004 he was awarded the Heinrich-Heine-Preis. In 2006, shortly before his death, he was the Writer in Residence at the German department of the University of Warwick.

He died on 30 June 2006 in Frankfurt after a long fight against cancer, aged 68.