Noll, Ingrid

The German author Ingrid Noll was born in Shanghai. Her parents had left Hessen for China where her father, a physician, was running a clinic. Ingrid and her three siblings were taught at home, and she grew up in an environment that inspired story telling including a large garden, many animals, her own fertile imagination and the family library. The Nolls returned to Germany when the Communists came to power in 1949. Ingrid Noll attended a Catholic school for girls in Bad Godesberg, and in 1954 she began to read German literature and history of art at the University of Bonn, but did not complete her studies. She married Peter Gullatz in 1959 and had three children. Over the next few years she was busy being a mother, wife and assistant to her husband who practiced medicine in Weinheim. Ingrid Noll liked to write even as a child, but it was not until her own children had left home that she was able to realise her dream. Her books are published under her maiden name.