Eric Carle - Early Life

Early Life

Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1929 to German immigrants Johanna and Erich Carle, Eric moved back to Germany with his parents in the mid 1930s when he was six years old; his mother, homesick for Germany, took the family back to Stuttgart. He was educated there, and graduated from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. Eric's father was drafted into the German army in 1939 at the beginning of the World War II and was taken prisoner of war by the Soviet Forces when Germany capitulated in in the Sping of 1945. He returned home in late 1947, weighing 85 pounds. "When he came back, he was a broken man." He was, in Eric Carle's own words in a Guardian interview a "sick man, psychologically, physically devastated." Eric had been sent to the small town of Schwenningen to escape the bombings of Stuttgart. When Eric was 15, the German government conscripted him and other boys of his age to dig trenches on the Siegfried line. He doesn't care to think about it too deeply, although his wife, he says, thinks he still suffers from post-traumatic stress. "You know about the Siegfried line? To dig trenches. And the first day three people were killed a few feet away. None of us children -- Russian prisoners and other conscripted workers. The nurses came and started crying. And in Stuttgart, our home town, our house was the only one standing. When I say standing, I mean the roof and windows are gone, and the doors. And, well, there you are." Always homesick for America, Eric dreamed of returning one day to the United States, so he moved to New York City in 1952 with only $40 to his name. Once there, he landed a job as a graphic designer in the promotion department of The New York Times. He was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War and stationed in Germany with the Second Armored Division and appointed the position of mail clerk. After returning from the service, Carle returned to his old job with The New York Times and later became the art director of an advertising agency.