Eberhard Koebsell

Eberhard Koebsell, alias Clemens Laar, studied modern history and modern languages in Berlin and Leipzig. After training as a journalist in Leipzig, he settled in Berlin as a freelance writer. He wrote mainly for newspapers and illustrated magazines of the Ullstein publishing house. His nationalistic tendencies made him particularly popular at the time of National Socialism. In 1933, Koebsell became a member of the paramilitary SA Reiterstandarte (mounted squadron). From 1936 he regularly wrote serial novels in the magazine “Die Wehrmacht”.

In the same year, Koebsell also published his best-known book, …reitet für Deutschland (Riding for Germany), a novel about Carl-Friedrich Freiherr von Langen, the 1928 dressage gold medalist. The novel was made into a film in 1941 starring popular German actor Willy Birgel (1891–1973). After World War II the book was heavily revised and the ideological direction was reversed.

In 1939 Koebsell was called to service and, after being wounded in the French campaign, became a special correspondent on the Eastern Front for illustrated magazines, ultimately with the rank of lieutenant. In 1951 the novel My Father’s Horses was published, which was also filmed. Later Laar/Koebsell fell into oblivion and eventually hanged himself on the balcony of his villa in the Berlin Grunewald. In 1952, he submitted the first edition of Die curieuse Reiterfibel (The strange rider’s primer), a short novel of 171 pages.