Nightmare for all helicopter parents: pippi longstocking - still a child at 70

Pippi and Mr. Nilsson – a great team.

(Photo: imago / United Archives)

She knows a lot about plutimication, her pill is called Krummelus and works against growing up, and the girl with the red braids has a lot on her chest in general. Off to Taka-Tuka-Land!

So one sees "little superman" out .

(Photo: imago stock&people)

The most famous girl in the world might never have existed had it not been for another girl who had pneumonia in bed in 1941. It is Karin, the daughter of the Swedish Astrid Lindgren. She is seven years old. "Tell me about Pippi Longstocking!" she asks her mother. And that tells. Of a "little super people", as she says herself, who effortlessly lifts up policemen like horses and can do whatever he wants because of the lack of parental supervision. When Lindgren is tied to the bed herself after a fall, she writes everything down. In November 1945, the stories about Pippi Longstocking appeared as a book for the first time.

Because of her rough nature, the snot with the fiery red hair comes across some after its publication in the Raben publishing house & Sjögren but bitterly. The distinguished professor John Landquist Pippi finds abnormal and pathological. "Not a normal child", he comments, "eats an entire cream cake or goes barefoot on sugar. Both are reminiscent of a madman’s imagination." The Bonnier publishing house had previously given Lindgren a cancellation due to similar concerns. "I had small children myself and was horrified to imagine what would happen if they took this girl as a role model", admitted the publisher Gerhard Bonnier years after the publication.

Pippi – original mother of all punkers?

The author – childishly into old age.

(Photo: imago stock&people)

He will often have wrinkled his hair over rejecting the manuscript. Because millions of children, first in Sweden and later all over the world, immediately loved Pippi in their hearts. The anarchic half-orphan became the undisputed heroine of the children’s room – and still is. "This is probably because they are so independent of adults is", knows Lindgren’s daughter Karin Nyman. "It is nice for children to read about someone like that." She lives with her horse and monkey in a colorful villa, invents words like spunk and games like "Non-touch the-ground", she buys 18 kilos of candy in the shop and gives gold to burglars while her career choice is still between "fine lady" and "buccaneer" fluctuates: With Pippi it never gets boring. Against growing up, she and her friends swallow Thomas and Annika Krummelus pills, which look suspiciously like peas.

Her literary mother Astrid Lindgren didn’t need magic pills in order not to grow up. "She understood what it was like to be a child", Swedish actress Inger Nilsson, who played Pippi in the film, says about Lindgren. "You can see from the books that she was happy as a child herself, and she really loved children." For Lindgren, her childhood is inspiration for her stories. In the model for the tree from which Pippi serves lemonade to children, the author climbed around even in old age: it stands in the garden of Lindgren’s parents’ house in Vimmerby. The fact that the Swede invented the little girl who questions authorities and has her own head was probably also a reaction to the horror of World War II. "One can perhaps believe that it was a kind of liberation to write about someone who did not allow himself to be oppressed, who had this sovereign attitude towards his fellow men and who did not care about conventions", says Nyman. Pippi is interpreted as a feminist and anarchist, some even see her as the founder of punk 40 years before the Sex Pistols.

While the first Pippi Longstocking volume appeared in Sweden in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, it was only launched in Germany four years later when Lindgren met the German publisher Friedrich Oetinger. Even if Pippi is Lindgren’s most successful invention with around 66 million books sold today, it wasn’t her own favorite character: that was Michel from Lönneberga, says Lindgren’s family. Also a louse child.

Pippi long socks from A – Z

Like now, why not put your feet on the table? It’s comfortable!

(Photo: imago stock&people)

A like authority: is not for Pippi. Even if she tries to go to school: "pluttification" and she just doesn’t enjoy things like that. And she doesn’t want to be told what she has to do or not.

B for banknotes: Pippi can be seen on the side of her inventor on the new Swedish 20 kroner note since this autumn.

C for comic: First in the Swedish magazine "KlumpeDumpe" The adventures of Pippi Longstocking also appeared as a comic. Later the picture stories came out in book form.

D for Donner-Karlsson: One of the two burglars whom Pippi does not do. In the films, the crook is played by Hans Clarin, the voice of Kobold, who died in 2005 "Pumuckl".

E for Efraim Longstocking: Pippi’s extraordinarily fat father, captain of the oceans and king from Taka-Tuka-Land.

Those who refuse to follow rules shall feel the consequences!

(Photo: imago stock&people)

F for Fifi Brindacier: that’s the name of Pippi Longstocking in France. In Thailand the brat with the fiery red hair is known as Pippi Thung-taow Yaow, in Finland as Peppi Pitkätossu and in Portugal as Bibi Meia-longa. In Greece it is called Pipe Phakidomyte.

G for obedience: Pippi only obeys himself. But even that doesn’t always work. If she should go to bed in the evening, she has to scold herself: "First I say it very gently, and if I don’t obey, then I say it again sternly, and if I still don’t want to hear then there are pickups."

H for Heim: This is where the police want to put Pippi, but she explains: "I already have a place in the children’s home." By that she means the Villa Kunterbunt, she explains the perplexed men: "I am a child and this is my home, so it is a children’s home."

I like Inger Nilsson: For the Swede with the unmistakable dimples, Pippi was both a curse and a blessing. As a Pippi actress, Nilsson became Sweden’s first child star overnight. But as an adult, she struggled to get other roles.

J for fair: Here, Pippi emerges as the winner in the showdown with a wrestler. No wonder, after all, she is the strongest girl in the world.

Who in her "children’s home" disturbs, is dumped!

(Photo: imago stock&people)

K for Kunterbunt: Pippi lives in Villa Kunterbunt alone with her horse and her monkey.

L for lemonade tree: stands in the garden of Pippi’s villa. According to Pippi, lemonade (and sometimes chocolate) grows in its hollow interior, which it distributes to children. The empty bottles practically wither.

M for Meerkatze: In Lindgren’s books, Pippi’s monkey Mr. Nilsson is a Meerkatze, in the films he is played by a squirrel monkey.

N like Negro King: Pippi Longstocking’s father could still be called until a few years ago. New editions of the books today refer to the King of the South politically correct, after many parents had complained about the name.

O like uncle, little one: that’s the name of Pippi’s mold with the black dots, which the girl easily lifts up and lives on the veranda of the Villa Kunterbunt.

P for Prüsseliese: The humorless director of the children’s home, actually "Miss Prüsselius" means, but from Pippi "Prüsseliese" is known from the Pippi films – but does not appear in the books at all.

R like striped stockings: Pippi wears on his feet – in different colors, of course.

(Photo: imago stock&people)

S like cream cake: Pippi can eat a whole copy of it for breakfast. In doing so, you may come up with new words like "Spunk" on. She finds out what that is with Thomas and Annika.

T for Taka-Tuka-Land: Island in the South Pacific, surrounded by the purest blue water, on Pippi’s father Efraim Longstocking "fat white chief" is.

U for Ur-Pippi: In the original version of "Pippi long stocking", The version that Astrid Lindgren gave her daughter Karin for her birthday is a little bit more naughty and shameless.

V for traffic: This is how Pippi lies in bed: with her legs on the pillow and her head at the foot end. "Let’s not live in a free country?" she asks her friend Tommy when he wonders about it.

W like wiping: it’s not like Pippi never takes care of the household. She only does it in her own way. For example, she wipes two scrubbing brushes on her feet to wipe, pours a bucket of water and slides over the floor.

Z like magic pills: "Dear little Krummelus, I never want to be greeted", say Pippi, Thomas and Annika and swallow the magic pills, with the help of which they should remain children forever.

Nightmare for all helicopter parents: pippi longstocking – still a child at 70

Pippi – original mother of all punkers?

Pippi long socks from A – Z

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