Herbert Karl Ludwig Kranz, pseudonym Peter Pflug (born 4 October 1891 in Nordhausen; died 30 August 1973 in Braunschweig) was a German writer.
After graduating from the Städtisches Reform-Realgymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1910, Kranz studied German, philosophy and history in Berlin and Leipzig. At the start of World War I he volunteered, but was discharged two years later due to illness as a lieutenant. He then married Ulrike Reck. After starting as a scientific assistant at the Youth Welfare Office in 1918, he took on several jobs in the literary field in addition to his own literary activities with various publications. He worked as a director at the theater in Düsseldorf in 1920 and in the Netherlands in 1923. From 1925 he worked first as a freelancer, then as an editor at the Rhein-Mainische-Volkszeitung in Frankfurt am Main, which belonged to the Herder publishing group, and from 1927 produced the children's newspaper Weg in die Welt as its supplement. From 1930 to 1933, he was a professor of German at the Halle (Saale) Pedagogical Academy in teacher training, without having a teaching degree himself. After Hitler's rise to power, Kranz was dismissed from the academy in 1933 because of his liberal views. He found employment as a local editor at the Frankfurter Zeitung and, in parallel, at the Illustrierte Blatt. At the same time he worked as a freelance writer. In 1941, for example, he wrote Hinter den Kulissen (Behind the Scenes), an anti-Semitic pamphlet about French politics from 1933 to 1940. In 1943, the Frankfurter Zeitung was closed down and he was banned from his profession by the Reichsverband der Deutschen Presse (Reich Association of the German Press)[1] for his drama Der Ritt mit dem Henker (The Ride with the Hangman), whereupon the Illustrierte also dismissed him. His book Zeugnis der Zeiten was, however, recommended by Alfred Rosenberg's "Hauptamt Schrifttum" for Nazi libraries.[2]
After the war, he lived as a freelance writer in Vachendorf, Stuttgart, Gebersheim and, from 1970, in Königstein im Taunus. He died in 1973.
Herbert Kranz celebrated his greatest literary successes in the field of children's and youth literature. At the age of 60, he began his most successful series of novels based around the fictional society Ubique Terrarum. This 10-volume series describes the adventures and experiences of a group of six men (an Englishman named Stephen Slanton - the chief, an Irishman named Patrick Cromby - Plumpudding, two Frenchmen : first Cyprian Bombardon - as cook lamprey, second Gaston of Montfort, honorary knight of the Sovereign Order of Malta and Count of Darifant - the count, two Germans, namely Dr. Peter Geist - called GG, the Great Spirit (in many ways inspired by the Hallens pedagogue Adolf Reichwein) and his friend Bertram Kunke, as a 'character' and from volume 6 onwards, instead of him, the young Indian Tschandru-Singh). The stories are set in Afghanistan, Brazil, the United States, a Caribbean island, Greenland, Malaysia, Sardinia, Morocco, Lebanon, and southern France, among other places.[3]
The novels were written between 1953 and 1958 and were all first published by Herder in Freiburg. All the novels contain an alphabetical appendix to the countries, places, people, and expressions described, which was not common in juvenile literature at the time. His grandson Georg Kranz reissued the series as paperbacks with an updated glossary from 2004 to 2010.
These include the series "The Voice of the Past" (1960-1964), also published by Herder in Freiburg. A historical personality is the main character of each book.
From Dutch: Paul Biegel: Ich will so gern anders sein. Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 2014, . First edition published by Herder, Freiburg 1969.