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Known throughout Germany: The mouse in front of the Brandenburg Gate
Photo: Jens Kalaene / dpa
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.
Accordingly, she died last Sunday, September 4th, with her family in Frankfurt am Main.
According to WDR, the artist, who was born in Eisenach, illustrated around 35 books and made bronze and ceramic sculptures in her career.
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 first appeared in 1971's »The Show with the Mouse«.
WDR acknowledged that Schmitt-Menzel shaped her 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 Mrs. Schmitt-Menzel for that." The Twitter account "Die Maus" operated by WDR said: "She gave the mouse its essential character traits and its 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 into fantastic and crazy stuff.
Then I thought: The mice will definitely all get a different color 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.
ktz/dpa
