The following is a brief biographical sketch of the Great Man, Ernst Werklempter. It is a work in progress, but I post the first part here in response to the nearly overwhelming demand to know more about this legendary figure. I am preparing a manuscript for publication, so consider this a sneak preview. It may be more than that, since no one is preparing to actually publish it. [Faust]
Ernst Werklempter was born on March 15, 1843, to a family of preachers, teachers, and turnip farmers. He lost his father to an unwanted death when he was five years old, after which the Werklempter household consisted of young Ernst, three older sisters, two aunts, a great aunt, his beloved mother, his grandmother, and two boarders - Gerta Tagbut, and her young daughter, Giselde, who were taken in due to the high cost of turnip farming brought about by the Great Turnip Famine of 1848, which of course caused great unrest throughout Europe. Growing up, young Ernst spent many a joyful hour in his corner of the childrens bedroom, probably reading the Greeks, the Bible, and several works of military history that his father had left him. It is known that he also possessed, through bequeathal from his father, a complete set of Baumlooker’s Popular Illustrated Anatomy and Fertility Tables, which were originally purchased by subscription from an itinerant band of Gypsies. And perhaps some pirate stories.
According to his mother’s diary, now preserved in the Werklempterhaus Museum and Coffee Shop in his hometown of Flemenspitz, he was an able student, well regarded by all except one teacher he encountered soon before leaving for boarding school, a Fraulein Drauptrau, with whom he is said to have had some discipline problem, and who seemed to keep Ernst after school a lot.
But the young genius overcame these circumstances, and entered the Academy at Drivel (Dribbel). It was here that he met Bachfeuer, Hoofenmuth and Hoser, with whom he would later work in Paris, Bern and Rome, respectively. During these years, Werklempter corresponded voluminously with his mother, often relating the joy and confusion of his investigations into classical antiquity, the latest scientific developments, and the first glimmer of his religious transformation. And pirates. He wrote about pirates a lot.
It was also there, even before he had fulfilled all of his academic requirements, that he was offered the position of Temporary Visiting Lecturer at Berlin, a job he took gladly, despite the fact that he was required not only to lecture (usually at the optional Saturday night series) but also to perform certain clerical, administrative and janitorial duties.
And it was during these years that Werklempter first began to write for publication, producing such seminal pieces as Why My Mother Hit Me So Much, Thus Spake My Mother, and Why I Forgot My Mother’s Birthday, this last being an open letter in the Flemenspitz newspaper, the Flemenspitoon, wherein we see the first mention of his doctrine of the Eternal Reminder.
His star rose rapidly, and soon he was appointed to the Shitzfuller Chair of Philosophy and Root Vegetable Studies at Berlin, which led to his appointment at The Sorebun, in Paris, where he is credited with the invention of the canape, among other innovations. This is the Werklempter people know best - the bon vivant with a delicate nose and an even more delicate stomach. It is where he met what may have been the love of his life (excepting his cousin, Heidi Lauftskirten from Vienna, but more on her later), Mlle. Honeurnice. And it is where, in his first year, he produced his first masterpiece, An Enquiry that Produced an Essay if Not Quite a Treatise Concerning a Method of Philosophizing Briefly, So as Not to Take too Much Time and a Lot of Reading, the source of his first aphoristic works, and a harbinger of things to come.
Werklempter’s nonphilosophical works include A Turnip Cookbook, Turnip Cookery for Singles, The Joy of Turnips, Teaching Children How to Gamble, One Hundred Excuses for Avoiding Funerals, and perhaps his best known, Handsome Pirates of The Mediterranean.
