Pel Schlechter

Paul Marie Jean Pierre Schlechter, known all his life as Pe'l, was a Luxembourgish graphic designer, comic pioneer, illustrator and late-life writer who helped give the Grand Duchy a visual identity and then, past ninety, a first-person memory of occupation and forced conscription. He was born on 20 April 1921 in the Limpertsberg quarter of Luxembourg City, the youngest of five children of the writer Demy Schlechter. The Luxembourgish Wikipedia cites the City of Luxembourg birth register, act No. 161, dated 21 April 1921. His father died when Pe'l was two. His mother, left without a pension, raised the children with the help of her sister Virginie Muller, known as Tata Wirsch, a chief saleswoman at Maison Brasseur on the Groussgaass. Putty Stein's song "O Wirsch!" was widely said to be about her. Pe'l later said the household ran on teasing, songs and card games, and that he inherited an almost stubborn optimism from parents he described as inveterate optimists. In a June 2026 interview he remembered street freedom, the Schueberfouer, and a four-year-old fright when a stranger took his hand at the fair and his older sister snatched him back. He said childhood, when children could still play in the street, was perhaps the period he remembered most fondly.

He wanted to draw from the start, and said he had imagined work with mills, or as a theatre, window or fashion decorator. Drawing teachers steered him toward the trade school. From 1933 he attended the Athenäum in Luxembourg City, then from 1937 to 1939 the state crafts school, the École d'artisans de l'État, including the decorative-painting class of the painter Josy Meyers. The City of Luxembourg later described that training as building technician studies at the Lycée des Arts et Métiers. Drawing teachers Lamboray and Schaack advised him to take a building course rather than the theatre and fashion decoration he first imagined. He said he was happy there and that the choice was the right one. He did not complete a university degree. The war interrupted the architectural career he had just begun. He began work in 1939, just before the war reached Luxembourg, with the architect Pierre Grach. His first remembered job was the facade of the administrative building of the Faïencerie at Millebaach. He also worked with the architect Arthur Thill, including cinema projects such as the Eldorado and the Marivaux, and later church reconstruction.

The German invasion of 10 May 1940 cut that start short. The Luxemburger Autorenlexikon records that he was sent to the Reichsarbeitsdienst and then forcibly conscripted into the German Wehrmacht, including time on the Eastern Front in Silesia and Poland, and training as a pilot. He deserted in the Netherlands with help from Dutch resistance organisations and lived in hiding in Rotterdam until the end of the war. He told d'Lëtzebuerger Land that he did not get home until August or September 1945, and that on the train from Brussels to Luxembourg he was offered work by three architects. Friends, the artist brothers Jos and Emile Probst, pointed him to Pierre Reuter and Léon Loschetter, who specialised in rebuilding destroyed churches. He spent about five years with them. After the war he married his childhood sweetheart. The Luxembourgish Wikipedia names his wife as Yvette Meyer. They had two sons. One son, Pit Schlechter, is a writer. The second son's name has not been made public. His brother Ger Schlechter was an actor. Other siblings named in the Autorenlexikon through his childhood memoir are Anni, Rob and Vic. Vic, about four years older, spent twenty-five years in Congo and later lived in Wiltz. Pe'l was the uncle of the writer Lambert Schlechter.

From that architectural drawing room he became one of the people who made Luxembourg look like Luxembourg. Luke Haas, in a chronicle of comics in Luxembourg, called him the pioneer who first stepped onto the country's comic stage, with a minimal drawing style. In Revue, from October 1948, he wrote and drew the rascal stories "De Bim an de Jopi". Two serials appeared, "De véiereckege Rondel" (1948-1949) and "De bloen Hari" (1949), later collected. The Luxembourgish Wikipedia says the strip ran in 49 instalments until October 1952, and that he stopped drawing comics in 1964. A first story was reprinted in Revue de la Jeunesse between 1974 and 1976. He is counted with Gab Weis and Félix Mersch as a father of the Luxembourgish comic. Beside comics he drew poems, cartoons and short pieces for d'Lëtzebuerger Land, Revue, Les Cahiers luxembourgeois, Nos cahiers, Die Warte and scout papers. He designed the first full-size dummy of d'Lëtzebuerger Land for his friend Carlo Hemmer, including the masthead, and for a time drew a front-page poem and picture each week. A drawing, "Den arme Jang", appeared in that paper on 13 February 1959.

For decades he was the poster artist people met without knowing his name: the Loterie Nationale, the Foire, the Schueberfouer, book jackets, logos, packaging, postage stamps, medals, coins and jewellery. He ran his own graphic studio in the city for about ten years, after a spell with the architect Pierre Gilbert. From 1972 to 1986 he was head of technical services and house graphic designer at the Société des foires internationales de Luxembourg, the fair company, and worked there until retirement. He illustrated collected editions of Luxembourg literary classics, including Adolf Berens, Auguste Liesch, Tit Schroeder, Willy Goergen, Max Goergen, Michel Rodange, Michel Lentz and Dicks. He co-founded the Cercle Pierre Roberti, collected ex-libris, and with Henri Hanlet published the two-volume Répertoire de l'ex-libris luxembourgeois. Volume 1, covering 1622-1993, appeared in 1997. Volume 2, covering 1993-2000, followed in 2019. He also made a Luxembourgish, newly drawn Struwwelpeter (1980) and, in 2017, illustrated and translated Hénoké Courte's children's story Anni et le secret des Raschpëtzer.

He came to books late and then would not stop. At 91 he published De Pol muss an de Krich (2012, Éditions Guy Binsfeld), a 240-page memoir of occupation, forced enlistment, desertion and the people who hid him, written in Luxembourgish and deliberately small-scale. He said he had thought it would be his first and last book. On the publisher's page he argues that the soup only tastes right once salt and pepper are in it: not only politicians and camp survivors, but also an ordinary Luxembourgish boy trying to get home, belonged in the record. In 2013, at 92, it won the Lëtzebuerger Buchpräis. Wéini kënnt fréier erëm? (2013) turned to childhood before the war. Later came the story collection Einfach esou (2023), the poems Reimereien (2024), and Fabelen (2025), Luxembourgish retellings of Jean de La Fontaine. On 9 February 2026 he read from the fables at Konviktsgaart and gave RTL an interview. On 20 April 2026, his 105th birthday, the city opened an exhibition of his work in the residence where he spent his last years. It ran through June. RTL said he also attended a 2024 book-prize ceremony as a nominee. He was not reported as the 2024 winner. Radio 100,7 replayed him on the morning after his death, remembering the fair with the line "Alles ass am Schnëppel".

He wrote almost always in Luxembourgish, the language he said mattered to him as it had to his father. He welcomed a newer orthography. He was not a party politician in the public record. His civic loyalty shows in the work: the fair, the lottery posters, the language prizes, and the decision to publish forced-recruit memory in Luxembourgish rather than in French or German. Documented honours include a children's-theatre prize from the City of Luxembourg (1982); literary prizes from Actioun Lëtzebuergesch (1983 and 1985); first prizes and recognition at the Saarländischer Mundartwettbewerb, including poems such as "Eng Zammerkëscht" and "Déi do uewen", with years cited as 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1993, and the Gëllene Schniewel in 1991; the silver Dicks-Rodange-Lentz plaque of Actioun Lëtzebuergesch in 1995, received together with his brother Ger; Officier of the Ordre de Mérite du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (2009, reported by the Escher Tageblatt on 19 June 2009); and the Lëtzebuerger Buchpräis in 2013 for De Pol muss an de Krich. A career tribute, Crayon - Plume - Pinceau. Hommage à Pe'l Schlechter, was published by the fair company in 1996. Design Friends issued a short biography brochure in 2017.

In 2021 he was still living in Limpertsberg. His last years were at Konviktsgaart, the Résidence Grande-Duchesse Joséphine-Charlotte, where he said he was well settled and well looked after, despite having always said there would be no retirement home. He told Land that he had practised judo for more than ten years, held a black belt, practised aikido for five years, and swam regularly, and that he credited those sports with keeping him in better shape than many neighbours in the care home. The Luxembourgish Wikipedia says he was a co-founder of Aikido Club Luxembourg in 1970. RTL, at his 100th birthday, also called him an enthusiastic sportsman and musician. In June 2026 he told Land that in any new situation he looked for the positive and the negative and then concentrated on the positive, a habit he said he inherited. Asked whether he had ever thought he would reach such an age, he said no, not at all, he had not even thought about it. He was sceptical, in the same interview, of a childhood that had vanished into screens, tapping the air as if on a phone.

He died on 2 September 2026, aged 105, peacefully at Konviktsgaart. The cause of death has not been made public. No illness, accident, or medical cause has been published. Mayor Lydie Polfer wrote that Luxembourg had lost a pioneer of graphic design and, above all, an endearing man whose zest for life and kindness touched everyone around him. He was the father of the writer Pit Schlechter and the uncle of the writer Lambert Schlechter. A family notice appeared in the Luxemburger Wort on 5 September 2026. As of the sources used here, no public funeral or resting place has been named. There is no English Wikipedia article. The main public biography is the Luxembourgish article, with a shorter Dutch article and the Luxemburger Autorenlexikon entry by Roger Muller and Claude Kremer, updated on 3 September 2026.