James Krüss was the best known and most prolific children's author in what was for nearly all his writing life the Federal Republic of Germany. Inheriting a post-war literary desert, within which the Nazi Party had discouraged creative writing for children in favour of a hoped-for return to true Germanic folk poetry, Krüss was a hugely important figure in the re-establishment of the freedom of imaginative story-telling. His first children's book, The Lighthouse on Lobster Island (1956), was based on his own experience of growing up in Heligoland, and was followed by My Great-Grandfather and I (1959), a continuation in the same genre.