Waldemar Bonsels

Waldemar Bonsels (21 February 1880 in Ahrensburg – 31 July 1952 in Ambach, Münsing) was a German writer. Waldemar Bonsels's most famous work is the children's book Die Biene Maja und ihre Abenteuer (Maya the Bee and her Adventures, translated as The Adventures of Maya the Bee). This work served the basis for a Japanese animated television series named Maya the Honey Bee in the mid-1970s, as well as a Croatian opera for children written by Bruno Bjelinski, making Bonsels work known to even a great audience. The opera was staged in 2008 in Villach, Austria at the Carinthian Summer Music Festival. Himmelsvolk (People in the Sky) is a sequel with a more philosophical focus, describing in mystical terms the unity of all creation and its relationship to God. He wrote a number of novels and shorter stories dealing with love as Eros and the higher level of divine love in the spirit of romanticism (Eros und die Evangelien, Menschenwege, Narren und Helden, etc.), with the relationship between man and nature in a simple life unchanged by modern civilisation (Anjekind, etc.) and also a historical novel about the time of Jesus (Der Grieche Dositos). He travelled extensively in Europe and Asia. Indienfahrt (Voyage in India) is the fruit of one of these travels. Bonsels was an outspoken anti-Semite and expressed his approval of Nazi politics against Jews in 1933, calling the Jew "a deadly enemy" who was "poisoning the culture" in an article (NSDAP und Judentum) which was widely published.