Your orange cartoon mouse from "The Show with the Mouse" has shaped a whole generation of children since 1971. As the WDR now reports, its creator, the graphic artist Isolde Schmitt-Menzel, died last Sunday.
She invented a character that shaped generations of children - now the "mother of the mouse" is dead: the graphic artist Isolde Schmitt-Menzel died at the age of 92. The WDR announced this, citing the family. According to WDR, the artist, who was born in Eisenach, illustrated around 35 books and made bronze and ceramic sculptures. She lived a long time as a freelance artist in Texas and southern France.
She is best known for the creation of the orange cartoon mouse, which was first seen in 1971 in "The Show with the Mouse". The WDR acknowledged that she shaped their original and imaginative character with the first 100 or so mouse spots she created. Without her and her great creativity, the mouse would not have seen the light of day, said WDR program director Jörg Schönenborn. "We are very grateful to Ms. Schmitt-Menzel for that."
The Twitter account "Die Maus" operated by WDR said: "It gave the mouse its essential character traits and color and will live on in it. We are very sad." More than 51 years after it was first broadcast, the show has long since become an institution, the mouse was honored by the Federal President, praised by Stefan Raab and brought into space by Alexander Gerst. Schmitt-Menzel developed the character from her book illustration "The Mouse in the Shop".
In a WDR interview on the occasion of the mouse's 40th birthday, she recalled the character's hour of birth: "That was exactly not my profession, a gray mouse. I was for fantastic and crazy things. So I thought: The mice will get on in any case, all a color other than gray. And the main mouse was orange, with brown ears, arms, and legs." Yellow stands for intelligence, red is energy. "The two things together in my mouse was my aspiration because I'm like that," she said. According to WDR, Isolde Schmitt-Menzel died last Sunday, September 4th, surrounded by her family in Frankfurt am Main.
