Children’s Literature in Hitler’s Germany. Christa Kamenetsky
Hitler was the destined | “leader” | of the people as their poet, Stefan George, had prophesied it. Scholars today differ in their views of whether the leadership cult and some anti-democratic tendencies of the Youth movement in pre-Nazi days may be held responsible for the rise of Nazism. Pross maintains that its “blue flower of longing” contained its own poison, whereas Sontheimer believes in its innocence, while he characterizes it as a “movement beyond politics.”70 The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
The Nazis disapproved of the German Youth movement as a whole, mainly because it served a variety of groups with different orientations. Significantly, however, they did try to keep alive all of its activities that had a romantic appeal, including the emphasis on folk songs, storytelling, and such sports as cross-country hiking, along with nature crafts, campfires, and even the solstice celebrations.71 All of these they merged with their own ideology, while superimposing upon them the stamp of uniformity. By 1939, the Hitler Youth Organization was the only youth organization left, and about seven million children and youths were forced to march, sing, and celebrate according to the same blueprints. By that time, some of the activities had already lost their popularity, mainly because they were no longer based on a freedom of choice and because attendance had become mandatory nation-wide.
Given the amount of freedom and the diversity of movements that had still existed in the Weimar Republic, totalitarianism cannot be considered a predestined fate of the German nation or an inevitable evolution of history. In earlier days, the Volkish-political groups still used to be balanced by others representing liberal and international ideas along with the peaceful goal of world understanding. All of these countervailing forces were abolished by force, along with the opposition, when Hitler seized power in 1933.
With the rise of Nazism a didacticism was imposed upon children’s literature for which there was also no equivalent in the past. The didactic trends of earlier times had served at least the moral and religious instruction of the individual child, but now literature and the child were both placed at the service of the State. One of the main reasons why such a radical change in the literary and ideological orientation was not immediately evident to all involved was because the Nazis so cleverly emphasized the Romantic folklore revival72 and pre-Nazi Volkish trends. Many former members of the German Youth movement and others, too, who had been steeped in Volkish thought, came to believe that censorship was a necessary temporary measure to bring to fruition the German dream of national unity. The following analysis will show how step-by-step the Nazis utilized such misconceptions to their own advantage by promoting a “Volkish literature” to strengthen the ideological goals of the Third Reich.
Plate 4
Young Hero of the Reich
NOTES
1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit in Bernt von Heiseler, ed., Goethe, Gesammelte Werke, Vol.6 (Gütersloh, Bertelsmann Verlag, 1954), Part I.
2. Christian Felix Weisse published in 1766 Lieder für Kinder, a volume of children’s songs, that went through five different editions within the span of ten years. His Kinderfreund appeared between 1775 and 1882 in twenty-eight volumes and was translated into French and Dutch. Kunze refers to it as the typical journal of the enlightenment, as it emphasizes morality and the power of reason. See Horst, Kunze, Schatzbehalter: Vom Besten aus der alten Deutschen Kinderliteratur (Hanau, Werner Dausien Verlag, 1965), p. 124.
3. Friedrich Gedike, Gesammelte Schulschriften, Vol. I (Berlin, 1789), pp. 422–423. Cited by Kunze.
4. Bettina Hürlimann, Three Centuries of Children’s Books in Europe (Cleveland, The World Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 99–113.
5. Goethe, in reference to the year 1760. See Kunze, pp. 37–38. He further mentioned Fénelon’s Telemacchus and the German chapbooks.
6. Kunze, pp. 293–295. An excerpt from Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the only sample of “foreign children’s books” popular with German children that Kunze includes in his anthology, the Schatzbehalter. See also Hürlimann, pp. 173–174.
7. Ibid., pp. 39–40. See also: Joseph Prestel, Handbuch der Jugendliteratur, Vol. 3. (Freiburg, Herder Verlag, 1933), pp. 53–56. A new edition of the German chapbooks is available in two volumes under the title Die Deutschen Volksbücher (Retold by Gustav Schwab). (Vienna, Verlag Lothar Borowsky, 1975). Originally, the Volksbücher were not anthologized but were sold individually as slim (and inexpensive) paperbacks.
8. Ibid., pp. 37–38.
9. See Wilhelm Grimm, “Vorrede” Kinder- und Hausmärchen (based on the Oelenberg manuscript) (Heidelberg, J. Lefftz, 1927). In this preface Wilhelm Grimm explained that in rewriting the folktales he followed as closely as possible the spirit of the original language. This intention frequently has been confused with the original recording of the tales that was done in complete loyalty to the oral tradition. See Christa Kamenetsky, “The Brothers Grimm: Folktale Style and Romantic Theories” Elementary English (March, 1974), 379–383.
10. Wolfgang Menzel, Die deutsche Literatur, Part I (Stuttgart, 1828), pp. 270–273. Cited by Kunze, p. 43.
11. Harvey Darton, Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1932), pp. 163–168. Darton explores in these pages the reasons why some British writers at that time did hold folktales in a rather low esteem. See Samuel F. Pickering, Jr., John Locke and Children’s Books in Eighteenth-Century England (Knoxville, The University of Tennessee Press, 1981), pp. 40–69, and Cornelia Meigs, et al., A Critical History of Children’s Literature (New York, Macmillan Co., 1953), pp. 97–98.
12. Tieck and Brentano were less concerned about loyalty to the spirit of the oral tradition than were the Brothers Grimm, and thus did not care too much about making a distinction between the folktale (Volksmärchen) based on the inherited oral tradition and the literary fairy tale or fantasy (Kunstmärchen) based largely on the writer’s imagination. Yet, in taking certain liberties and mixing the genres, they created a number of delightful fairy tales that appealed to all ages. See also: Jens Tisner, Kunstmärchen (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1977), pp. 4–5.
13. Hürlimann, pp. 1–41.
14. The very extensive preface of the Grimms’ longer combined folktale edition of 1950 includes an extensive bibliographical listing of all fairy tale editions that had appeared in other countries since 1812. See Kinder- und Hausmärchen gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm. Erster Band, Grosse Ausgabe. (Göttingen, Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1850) pp. i-iviii.
15. Herder always emphasized each nation’s obligation to realize from the outset its own potentialities and then to turn to humanity at large. Nobody could constructively contribute to humanity if he neglected to cultivate his own garden. See Johann Gottfried Herder, “Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität” in Herders Sämmtliche Werke XVII, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin, 1894), pp. 153–155. See also Oscar Walzel, German Romanticism (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1967), Chapter I, and Robert Clark, Jr. Herder: His Life and Thought (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1965), chapters 3 and 5.
16. The correspondence of the Brothers Grimm gives us a good idea about the international connections. See, for example, Wilhelm Schoof, ed., Unbekannte Briefe der Brüder Grimm. Unter Ausnutzung des Grimmschen Nachlasses (Bonn, Athenäum, 1960). As an example of Jacob Grimm’s influence on Sir Walter Scott consult Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (Wakefield, Yorkshire, S. R. Publishers, Ltd., 1968). In various notes Scott acknowledged the Grimms’ contributions to the study of folklore and mythology.
17. Irische Elfenmärchen (Leipzig, Fleischer Verlag, 1826). Croker was so delighted with Wilhelm Grimm’s essay “About the Fairies” that he himself translated it into English and affixed it to the second English edition of Fairy Legends. Thomas Keightley used it for his books on comparative