The German author and illustrator Janosch has died on Tenerife at the age of 95, his publisher Beltz announced on 4 November. Born Horst Eckert on 11 March 1931 in Hindenburg, in what is now Zabrze in Poland, he died on Tuesday 3 November in the island home where he had lived quietly since the early 1980s.

His international breakthrough came in 1978 with Oh, wie schön ist Panama, the story of Tiger and Bear setting off in search of Panama and discovering that happiness was at home all along. The book's Tiger Duck, a small striped wooden duck on wheels, became one of the most recognisable figures in German children's literature. Across a career of more than 150 books, translated into some 30 to 40 languages and sold in their millions, he created a world of warmth, friendship and gentle anarchy.

The label of children's author only ever told part of the story. Janosch was also a draughtsman and painter who made etchings and wrote books for adults, some of them sharply critical of society and the church, drawing on a difficult childhood in Upper Silesia. From 2013 to 2019 he commented on current affairs in the German weekly magazine ZEIT Magazin through his alter ego Wondrak.

He received the German Youth Literature Prize in 1979 and the Federal Cross of Merit, among other honours. Earlier this year the Neues Kunstmuseum Tübingen marked his 95th birthday with a large children's party, and the biggest collection of his work is held by the Bilderbuchmuseum Burg Wissem in Troisdorf, where it has been on loan since 2005 and in the museum's keeping since 2025.