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HOME » ABOUT WOLO » "ABOUT MYSELF" About Myself By "Wolo" To begin with I want to use this opportunity to explain my origin and name. Although most people think I am Swiss, I am of German origin. I am really a bit of both, and since it is quite interesting I'll tell the story. Having spent my early youth and gone to school in the Italian part of Switzerland (a place so beautiful you can't work but only make love there), I just naturally assumed I was Swiss. However, one afternoon my mother tearfully explained to me that, because of a divorce arrangement, I, being the first-born, would from my twelfth year on legally belong to my Father, who lived in Germany, where he was an officer in the Imperial German Grenadier Guards. All this because, being the first-born and thus the Baron Wolff Erhardt Anton George Trutzschler Von Falkenstein! (Now do you appreciate it that I call myself just "Wolo"?) Somehow I had never thought much about the nobility-angle and so her explanation was a tremendous shock to me, especially since I had absolutely no recollection of what my father looked like. I remember the panic on the day of transfer in Lucerne when the train arriving from Germany disgorged its passengers. Any of the male travelers could have been my father! How desperately I prayed "Lieber Gott! Please not the fat man with the beard?!" The eventually appearing fairly acceptable looking father freed himself from his parental responsibility almost immediately by "plunking" me into a Prussian officers school. (They started boys at twelve in those days!) Now since I spoke with a heavy Swiss-Italian accent, they figured to better first official make me a German, so they put me in front of a magnificent painting of Emperor William the Second, commonly remembered as "Kaiser Bill," then after the customary loud Prussian "Achtung!" I was told in parade ground decibels that "This is your Kaiser! You are a German Now. Verstande?" You could have taken a little poodle, make him sit in front of a picture of the Peruvian Presidente and scream at him. "O.K., this is your Presidente. You are a Peruvian now. Comprende?" Under the circumstances I became a not very enthusiastic German, always home-sick for Switzerland. Finally after the revolution I was able to return, whereupon I studied agriculture near Berne. My becoming an American citizen, many years later, was also unfortunately dramatic! Upon applying for citizenship I was told that, although I had overstayed my six months visa for over twelve years (!) and should be deported (to what, by that time was Hitler-Germany!) I was unbelievably lucky, being permitted to stay because of a technicality in my favor. (I had arrived still under age, as an exchange-student in agriculture of the University of Wisconsin, where I started working on a university-supervised dairy-farm in Beloit, at $10.00 a month (from five a.m. til seven p.m.)). I soon realized that, at best, this sort of activity could only get me the hand of the farmer's daughter, (who did not really "send" me), so I decided to write my own American Independence by becoming an artist, which is what I always wanted to be, but, as the first-born was not even permitted to even thing of! So, after a few ugly, hungry and cold years in Chicago I managed to go to sunny California, where I stated sketching caricatures in night-clubs, was lured to San Francisco, by a Chronicle reporter, became a front-page caricaturist, then had my own daily column: "I Saw You!" by Wolo. Then came my many murals in hospitals, including the "Little Jim Ward" of "Children's", the "Stanford Convalescent Home for Children" and the "Hippo" Restaurant on Van Ness Avenue. Whereupon I was discovered by William Morris in New York to write and illustrate what soon became five books for children. To help sell them I made puppets of my characters and thus became good enough to be invited by the United States Information Service to give shows in Europe. (Speaking five languages helped!) Upon my return I worked in the M.G.M. Picture "Lili". (I was the giant.) Next came television in San Francisco, the winning of the big C.B.S. contest of best-liked puppeteer of the West Coast, and a two-year contract in Hollywood. Big success and a stroke from overwork, a miraculous recovery, three summers of puppet-shows in Golden Gate Park, and the writing of six new children's stories for which I am presently trying to find a publisher. Wolo

HOME » ABOUT WOLO » "ABOUT MYSELF"

About Myself
By "Wolo"
To begin with I want to use this opportunity to explain my origin and name. Although most people think I am Swiss, I am of German origin. I am really a bit of both, and since it is quite interesting I'll tell the story. Having spent my early youth and gone to school in the Italian part of Switzerland (a place so beautiful you can't work but only make love there), I just naturally assumed I was Swiss. However, one afternoon my mother tearfully explained to me that, because of a divorce arrangement, I, being the first-born, would from my twelfth year on legally belong to my Father, who lived in Germany, where he was an officer in the Imperial German Grenadier Guards. All this because, being the first-born and thus the Baron Wolff Erhardt Anton George Trutzschler Von Falkenstein! (Now do you appreciate it that I call myself just "Wolo"?) Somehow I had never thought much about the nobility-angle and so her explanation was a tremendous shock to me, especially since I had absolutely no recollection of what my father looked like. I remember the panic on the day of transfer in Lucerne when the train arriving from Germany disgorged its passengers. Any of the male travelers could have been my father! How desperately I prayed "Lieber Gott! Please not the fat man with the beard?!"
The eventually appearing fairly acceptable looking father freed himself from his parental responsibility almost immediately by "plunking" me into a Prussian officers school. (They started boys at twelve in those days!)
Now since I spoke with a heavy Swiss-Italian accent, they figured to better first official make me a German, so they put me in front of a magnificent painting of Emperor William the Second, commonly remembered as "Kaiser Bill," then after the customary loud Prussian "Achtung!" I was told in parade ground decibels that "This is your Kaiser! You are a German Now. Verstande?" You could have taken a little poodle, make him sit in front of a picture of the Peruvian Presidente and scream at him. "O.K., this is your Presidente. You are a Peruvian now. Comprende?"
Under the circumstances I became a not very enthusiastic German, always home-sick for Switzerland. Finally after the revolution I was able to return, whereupon I studied agriculture near Berne.
My becoming an American citizen, many years later, was also unfortunately dramatic! Upon applying for citizenship I was told that, although I had overstayed my six months visa for over twelve years (!) and should be deported (to what, by that time was Hitler-Germany!) I was unbelievably lucky, being permitted to stay because of a technicality in my favor. (I had arrived still under age, as an exchange-student in agriculture of the University of Wisconsin, where I started working on a university-supervised dairy-farm in Beloit, at $10.00 a month (from five a.m. til seven p.m.)).
I soon realized that, at best, this sort of activity could only get me the hand of the farmer's daughter, (who did not really "send" me), so I decided to write my own American Independence by becoming an artist, which is what I always wanted to be, but, as the first-born was not even permitted to even thing of! So, after a few ugly, hungry and cold years in Chicago I managed to go to sunny California, where I stated sketching caricatures in night-clubs, was lured to San Francisco, by a Chronicle reporter, became a front-page caricaturist, then had my own daily column: "I Saw You!" by Wolo. Then came my many murals in hospitals, including the "Little Jim Ward" of "Children's", the "Stanford Convalescent Home for Children" and the "Hippo" Restaurant on Van Ness Avenue. Whereupon I was discovered by William Morris in New York to write and illustrate what soon became five books for children. To help sell them I made puppets of my characters and thus became good enough to be invited by the United States Information Service to give shows in Europe. (Speaking five languages helped!)
Upon my return I worked in the M.G.M. Picture "Lili". (I was the giant.)
Next came television in San Francisco, the winning of the big C.B.S. contest of best-liked puppeteer of the West Coast, and a two-year contract in Hollywood. Big success and a stroke from overwork, a miraculous recovery, three summers of puppet-shows in Golden Gate Park, and the writing of six new children's stories for which I am presently trying to find a publisher.
Wolo