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When I Was a Little Boy is an autobiographical book in which Erich Kästner returns to his childhood in Dresden, a city of civic order, school rules and family rituals, but also to a world that would later disappear in wars and social breakdowns. The book was first published in 1957 and holds a special place in his oeuvre because it shapes personal memories with the same clarity, humour and emotional precision for which his works for children are known.

Instead of a grand autobiographical panorama, Kästner builds a series of short episodes from his early years: his relationship with his parents, especially his mother, school incidents, boyish fears, feelings of shame, petty pride, his first conflicts with authority figures and his cautious discovery of the adult world. Very specific motifs are also mentioned that give the book its liveliness and personal touch - children's fear of Christmas, school tensions, encounters with more violent peers like Richard Naumann, as well as everyday life in which children's sensitivity collides with the rules and expectations of the society of the time. It is precisely because of such scenes that the book does not seem like embellished nostalgia, but rather a carefully reconstructed inner world of a boy who observes, remembers and tries to understand the people around him.

The special value of the work lies in the combination of brightness and shadow. Kästner writes warmly and humorously, but without sentimental embellishment: behind the tender memories, there is a constant awareness of the transience of time and the fragility of the bourgeois world in which he grew up. In his oeuvre, this book stands as an important autobiographical counterpart to novels for young people, because it shows where his enduring sensitivity to a child's perspective, moral clarity and mild irony come from. That's why When I Was a Little Boy is not just a book of memories, but also a very successful literary portrait of childhood, family, and a historical time.