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The Roots of Children’s Folk Literature in Pre-Nazi Germany
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, children’s literature in Germany in many respects resembled that of other countries in Europe. First, there were didactic books that were specifically written for children with the intent of teaching them religious lessons along with secular morals and manners. Secondly, there were the “classics,” many of which were originally written for adults but were later adapted for children. Finally, there was folklore in various forms: ballads, folk songs, myths, legends, and folktales of many lands, which German children enjoyed both in the oral tradition and in the printed versions.
In didactic literature for children, stories usually served as a means to another end, and the sermons were often longer than the plot—if plots were present at all. Some of these books contained tales about the saints, including religious legends, but others were merely illustrated catechisms or children’s sermons. The secular literature included ABC books, works on geography, history, and science, as well as handbooks on manners and morals designed to instruct “young ladies” and “young gentlemen.” The style of such works was often stilted and artificial, or else, dry and rather factual. In both cases, children could count on a moralistic ending.
In the eighteenth century, children particularly enjoyed those works that were richly illustrated, regardless of whether they were didactic in nature or of even older origin. Thus, Goethe in his childhood read Comenius’ Orbis Pictus (The World of Pictures), and Raff’s Naturgeschichte (Natural History).1 At that time Bodmer’s works, too, enjoyed great popularity, in spite of their didactic tendencies, as did Weisse’s first German children’s journal, Der Kinderfreund (The Children’s Friend).2 In 1787 Friedrich Gedike observed that, for his taste, there were too many types of books for children on the market, such as almanacs, story anthologies, poetry books, sermons for children, novels, comedies, tragedies, books of history, geography, biography, letters, and instructional conversations. Unfortunately, he wrote, most of these had been composed by “scribblers” with limited skills in writing. Children’s book publishers, too, had cared more for their own financial profits than for good quality.3 It appears from the context of Gedike’s complaint that he objected primarily to stylistic flaws and the shabby paper on which these works had been printed—not to the didactic tendencies present in most of them. Obviously, both the didactic content and the moralistic tone of books for children was taken for granted in those days. Humor, imagination, and adventure were rare commodities in children’s literature of the eighteenth century, as the authors placed instruction far above entertainment.
Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that children in Germany and elsewhere turned to the “classics.” Here, at last, they found what their own books denied them: above all, a good story with a convincing plot. Some of the most popular works among the classics were the Odyssey and the Iliad by Homer, including the myths and hero tales of classical mythology. Further, they enjoyed reading Aesop’s Fables, the tales of the Arabian Nights including Sinbad the Sailor, the epic tales of Roland and Siegfried, the romance of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and, of course, the Bible. They either read these works in an unabridged form, skipping whatever they didn’t like or didn’t understand, or their parents read aloud to them at family gatherings. The case was different with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, as an all-time favorite with children, as Campe had successfully prepared the first German children’s edition of this work as early as 1720. During the course of the eighteenth century four more adaptations of the book appeared in Germany, but Campe’s remained the most popular one until the twentieth century.4 Goethe read it in his childhood—alongside with other works not written for children: Schnabel’s Insel Felsenburg (Island of Rock Castle), Lord Anson’s Reise um die Welt (Journey Around the World) and most of the other classics.5
In the nineteenth century, German children very much enjoyed reading, in addition, Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter), and the jolly picture stories in verse by Wilhelm Busch, Max und Moritz (Max and Moritz) and Hans Huckebein (the story of a mischievous raven). Even though these stories were still “moralistic,” they presented, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, a grotesque kind of humor that appealed to children. In the last decades of the nineteenth century children also became acquainted with some of the finest newer books from abroad. In German translation they read Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Kipling’s Jungle Book, Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. These were works that appealed to their sense of imagination and adventure, as they had plots, themes, and characters with whom they could identify. One of the most popular works with children and adults alike was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Even though literary critics had reservations about it on account of its sentimental style, they did not deny its humanitarian spirit. Children liked it, above all, not because it “taught” them the principles of brotherhood and Christian love, but simply because it moved them to warm compassion, particularly for “Uncle Tom.”6 Here and in the other classics there were concrete stories, not abstract lessons.
A third category of books available to German children in earlier centuries dealt with folklore. In this genre, German children were especially well supplied with works appealing to their sense of adventure and imagination at a relatively early date when moralistic trends in England, for example, still dominated the scene. Herder and the Brothers Grimm initiated an interest in native as well as international folklore collections that eventually would fascinate all of Europe. Even before the Brothers Grimm printed their Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812, German children had enjoyed, in addition to the oral tradition, the German Volksbücher (folk books or chapbooks) dating back to the Middle Ages. Among them were the tales of Dr. Faustus, Magelone, Till Eulenspiegel, Siegfried, Genoveva, and Reynard the Fox.7 Goethe rewrote a number of these chapbooks which even Musäus, Brentano and the Brothers Grimm read with pleasure in their childhood.8 In the wake of Romanticism Görres published Die Teutschen Volksbücher (The German Chapbooks) and thus made the bulk of them available to young people in an anthologized form.
When the Brothers Grimm first began to record the oral tradition of German folktales, these stories still circulated freely among the more conservative peasant folk in the countryside. By this time, however, the Grimms noted that many of the city folk and the educated elite looked down upon them as “superstitious stuff” not worthy of the printer’s ink. With their publication of the folktales, and especially with their prefaces to the various editions, the Brothers Grimm contributed much to the acceptance of folktales as literature, for they built up a new understanding for the grace and poetry contained in their simple language, vivid imagery and sense of justice.9 The very fact that the work became an instant success in Germany and was reedited several times in expanded editions shows that the German readers warmed to their folktales to an unexpected degree.
Nevertheless, some parents remained skeptical toward the folktale. In 1828, the literary historian Wolfgang Menzel observed: “They are afraid that folktales might implant into their children’s souls some superstitions, or, at any rate, that reading folktales might lead them to be preoccupied with realms of fancy—something that would be detrimental to their schoolwork.”10 Evidently,\these skeptics overrated the role of factual instruction as much as they underrated the role of the creative imagination. Menzel felt that their views reflected a certain narrow-minded attitude and also bad taste. It was a pity, he wrote, that in many cases children were given such moralistic and prosaic stories to read as “Poky Little Franzi” and “Curious Little Lotti,” while their parents kept them away from the rich world of poetry and imagination that lay waiting for them in the world of folktales. We know that similar attitudes prevailed in Great Britain at approximately the same time. In both cases, parents tended to rate “useful” information, explanatory remarks, and a character’s “reasonable” behavior—at least at the end of a given story—far above the “fanciful” adventures of the mind.11
In Germany, the acceptance of folk literature as an integral part of children’s literature, and simultaneously, a greater appreciation of the literary fairy tale, began in the era of Romanticism. Writers such as Tieck, Arnim, and Brentano, for example, not only warmed the general public to collected folktales but also to fantasies, many of which were read by both children and adults.12 To that era also belonged such writers as Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), de la Motte-Fouqué, von Chamisso, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Mörike, all of whom, in their own unique ways, explored the fairy tale for their literary purposes while contributing to the creative growth of children’s literature. The undercurrent of didactic trends was not strong enough to halt the new wave of interest in folklore and works of the creative imagination.13
The Nazis glorified Herder, the Brothers Grimm, and the Romantic movement as a whole, but mainly for their contributions to the discovery of the “healthy folk reality”—not for their discovery of free imagination. Consequently, they would pay tribute to the collectors of German folklore, yet they would largely ignore the writers of fantasy. Even in singling out Herder and the Brothers Grimm for their “positive” contributions to the growth of the German nation, as they put it, they would selectively emphasize their collections of national folklore while they would ignore their contributions to comparative folklore and literature as well as to international understanding.14
And yet, it was Herder who, with his first international folk song collection toward the end of the eighteenth century, stimulated German interest in the Urpoesie (primeval poetry) of many lands. His Stimme der Völker (Voice of the Nations) contained authentic folk songs from a great number of nations, including the American Indians, and its preface supported the idea that, originally, all nations had sung with “one voice” to honor God who had endowed each one of them with an equal share of love. As a true Christian, Herder believed that each nation, like every individual, was equal and unique before God and that it was equipped with a “folk soul.” To recapture this soul, he said, which civilization had partially buried, it was necessary that each nation should collect the folk songs, myths, folktales and legends of the past, for in these was still living the naïve and pure spirit of ancient times.15
The Brothers Grimm shared Herder’s concept of the Urpoesie, which they renamed Naturpoesie (nature poetry). In respecting this theory of its common origin, they kept alive their vital interest in the folktales of other lands. Folklorists from the Scandinavian countries, among them Asbjörnsen and Moe, corresponded with them over many years, and so did folklore scholars from England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, and Serbia, to name just a few. The Brothers traveled to various foreign countries, and in turn, they received many visitors from foreign lands.16
The poetic and scholarly contributions of the Brothers Grimm to international and cross-cultural studies are quite remarkable by themselves. Wilhelm translated old Danish and old Scottish ballads while studying their background, and in 1823, just one year after its original publication, he translated, together with Jacob, the Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland, to which he added an original essay about the fairies of Ireland, Scotland and Wales.17 Jacob published in 1835 the first study of comparative mythology, the Deutsche Mythologie (Teutonic Mythology) that contained a systematic arrangement and analysis of parallel myths and folk beliefs in all of the “Teutonic” countries. This work is too scholarly to be counted as children’s literature, but like his comparative grammar, the Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar), and his translation of the monumental Serbian grammar, it gives evidence of his international (rather than merely national) orientation in folklore, language and linguistics.
What Herder and the Brothers Grimm told the other nations on behalf of the search for their “folk soul” through native folklore, they applied also to themselves. Undoubtedly, they had strong sentiments for their own fatherland and hoped to strengthen Germany’s self-awareness by reviving her national folk traditions. In this context they considered the Nordic Germanic folk heritage as an integral part of the native German tradition. Their “forefathers” had not been “savages,” they said, but peasants and warriors worthy of respect. As they encouraged their compatriots at home to shake off the fetters of foreign imitations, they called for the development of national pride, hoping that a revival of native folklore would help in promoting this goal.18
A closer analysis of the changing role of German and Nordic Germanic folklore in German culture of the nineteenth century is important for our background study of children’s literature in Nazi Germany, as the Nazis willfully distorted it. Whereas officially they took pride in having initiated a cultural revolution with the establishment of a “New Order” in the Third Reich, in effect, they spent much energy on “documenting” the “evolution” of Nazism from pre-Romantic and Romantic thought. The Nazi writer Dahmen, for example, in his work Die nationale Idee von Herder bis Hitler (The Idea of Nationalism from Herder to Hitler) claimed that Nazism was rooted in the heritage of Herder and the German Romantic movement. Julius Petersen went so far as to expound the idea that in their “Nostalgia for the Third Reich in German Legend and Literature,” the Nordic Germanic tribes had, more than a thousand years ago, foreseen the coming of the “savior,” Adolf Hitler;19 that the Romantic writers had continued this dream, and that the Nazi Regime had finally brought a fulfillment of this prophecy. In their text selections the Nazis consistently gave preference to political Romanticism over cultural Romanticism, while even in this case quoting passages out of context.
Among the early Romantic writers there were some indeed whose interest in folklore and poetry was secondary to a concern with politics.20 They were patriots at heart and strongly nationalistic, although not radically exclusive as far as other nations, races, or traditions were concerned. Among these were Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Ernst Moritz Arndt. In 1810, Jahn published his book Deutsches Volkstum (German Ethnicity) in which he expressed his longing for a renewal of Germandom from its “source.” He shared some ideas with Grimm but had his own plan. Folklore played a definite role in his program, especially folk songs, but in the final analysis, it represented only a minor aspect of his physical fitness program based on the principles of patriotism.21 Yet, folklore fused with nationalistic ideas was to have a very strong impact on the German Youth movement in the years to come, which considered Jahn as one of their spiritual fathers.22 Ernst Moritz Arndt, too, was better known for his political contributions than for his folklore research or his volumes of fairy tales.23 In his work Volk und Staat (Folk and State), published between 1802 and 1815, he praised the solid and safe possession of the soil inherited from generation to generation. Like Langbehn and de Lagarde after him, he saw the peasant as guardian not only of folklore but of the soil, thus praising him as the protector of the German state. He deserved to be called “the first of the fatherland,” and Arndt, as he had best preserved the original native concepts of custom, law, honor, loyalty and closeness to tradition and the land. He set the peasant up as a sharp contrast to the Bürger (bourgeois) of the cities who had lost interest in both tradition and land while chasing after superficial entertainment.24 While Jahn used German folk songs for his youth programs, thus hoping to revive German national consciousness among the young, Arndt became more engaged in political theory which made substantial use of the Nordic Germanic folk heritage.
The idea that the simple peasant held the key to certain intuitive powers of knowledge which were lacking in civilized man was not the invention of the early Romanticists nor of Herder, but originally came from Rousseau. New to the German interpretation of the “noble savage” concept was its association of the “golden age” with that of the Nordic Germanic past within the context of an “organic” folk state.25 It was mainly due to the influence of Heinrich Wilhelm Riehl that by the middle of the nineteenth century the study of folklore in Germany developed as a science, with close affinities to the field of sociology. In the idyllic and peaceful peasant community Riehl saw the basis for a new society built according to the pattern of medieval estates. For the industrial worker he developed a plan that was to transform him into a member of the folk community: he was to receive a small piece of land that he was expected to cultivate in his free time. Riehl thought that in this way he would not only strengthen his communion with the soil but also with the people of the peasant community. Within this community, he would recapture what he had lost as a result of civilization: his creative self, his individuality.26 Tönnies later developed the sociological contrast between the Gemeinschaft (community) and the Gesellschaft (society), both of which the Nazis adopted for their own purposes while denying the role of the individual within the community.27
We may identify two reasons why the German Romantic writers placed so much emphasis on folklore and folk community. Aside from Schelling’s nature philosophy which influenced many of their thoughts pertaining to the mystical power of the landscape, they faced some real problems with regard to the state of the nation, as well as the German cultural situation at large. Both of these they hoped to remedy. After Napoleon’s conquest, the three hundred diverse little dukedoms and kingdoms that made up Germany were reduced to forty-eight, which still did not bring about political or cultural unity. Officially, Germany did not reach statehood until 1871, and even then there were diverse systems, customs, and traditions that seemed to work against the ideal of the folk community. Nordic Germanic folklore, and peasant folklore in general, were at least a bond in history that was thought to work in favor of national unity.
A general dissatisfaction with the state of German culture motivated many German writers in the second part of the nineteenth century to diagnose the “disease” and to propose some remedies. As a cultural critic, Friedrich Nietzsche attacked German philistinism prevalent at his time in all spheres of life and art, along with rationalism and an extreme type of aestheticism. Other critics, although of lesser intellectual status than he, shared this diagnosis, but instead of advocating the contemplative power of the spiritual “superman” gaining wisdom from social isolation, they strongly urged for a return to the folk community and the “roots” of German ethnicity. Among them, particularly Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn had a strong influence on the development of Volkish thought that would influence children’s literature a few decades later.
De Lagarde bemoaned the fact that there was no German history, no German education, and no German folklore in the cultural life of the nation. People had forgotten their heritage; they trampled thoughtlessly upon the ruins of old monasteries and landmarks and hardly remembered Siegfried, the treasure of the Nibelungen, or the old German folktales. Education paid homage to classical ideals of Greece and Rome while neglecting native folklore, history, and literature. Nevertheless, Lagarde thought it was not too late to revitalize the idea of German ethnicity: “The old Germany is not yet dead . . .” he wrote in his Deutsche Schriften (German Writings). Even though life in the cities resembled that of wilting hothouse plants taken out of their natural environment, there was still hope for the German peasantry “rooted” in German traditions: “Behind the plow and in the forest, at the anvil of the lonely smithy, there we will find it. It helps us to fight our battles and grow the corn in our fields.”29 De Lagarde proposed a Nordic Germanic “Volkish” orientation within an “organic” folk community concerned with native religion, art, science, and literature—albeit under a “God-inspired Kaiser.”
Julius Langbehn, too, advocated a return to the Germanic North. Although he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Greek sculpture and spent much of his time in the South, he idealized the Nordic Germanic peasants and men of the North in general as the “true symbols of Volkish strength.” Like de Lagarde he glorified the German peasant, but more as the true representative of the German Volk who might save the nation from cultural despair. To him, the Germans were a peasant folk at heart, an Urvolk (primeval folk), endowed with native intelligence, a sense of independence and creativity. Rembrandt was his model of the Urvolk, of Nordic Germanic man himself. In his work Rembrandt als Erzieher (Rembrandt as an Educator) he proposed that Germans had to become true to their character and origin, just as Rembrandt had always been. Only in this way would they be able to unfold their mystical creative powers from within and once more rise as a nation. Langbehn strongly recommended a national art policy that would build up German self-confidence through a contemplation of German history and folklore. His book went through eight editions within the first two years following its publication and turned out to be the “Germanic Gospel” for hundreds of educators. Leaders of the German Youth movement reportedly carried it along on hiking trips, where it helped them to formulate their program.30
De Lagarde and Langbehn were strongly anti-semitic. For the Nazis, however, who very much admired both of them, their anti-semitism wasn’t strong enough, as they both believed in the “assimilated Jewry” determined by the degree of conversion to Nordic Germanic and conservative thought, rather than by blood.31 On the other hand, we have in the writings of these “Conservatives” already the idea of a cultural policy based on the concept of German ethnicity. In a more radical way Adolf Bartels and Josef Nadler applied this idea to literature around 1900, thus introducing a racially oriented literary policy32 pursued on an unprecedented scale by the Nazis after 1933. While Bartels and Nadler were the first ones to use the term “decadent literature” in association with “undesirable” cosmopolitan, liberal and Jewish influences, the Nazis later added to it the term “heroic literature” in an effort to promote a “positive” censorship policy based on Nordic Germanic heroic ideals and their own ideology.
This is not to say that all Volkish thought was racist or political, or that Nazism was the inevitable result of a historical evolution. On the contrary, trends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries give evidence of a great variety of ideas and concepts existing side by side. The Volkish writers themselves were full of inconsistencies and paradoxes—a fact that the Nazis preferred to ignore. De Lagarde and Langbehn, like Jahn, Arndt, and Riehl, also still believed in the unique individual and his organic role within the folk state—a thought from which the Nazis extracted only the latter part. In selecting passages from their works, National Socialist textbook writers and anthologists worried little about possible misrepresentation of Volkish thought, as long as it helped to support their ideological orientation.33
Plate 1
THE PEASANT AND THE NORDIC PAST
“Either we will be a peasant Reich, or we will not be at all!”
(Adolf Hitler)
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a neo-Romantic wave inspired the writing of a number of regional and historical novels concerned with German ethnicity, the German peasant, and the Nordic Germanic past. Among the historical novels were those of Dahn and Freytag, and among the peasant novels, the works of Keller, Raabe, and Storm. Whereas the first focused on the peasant and warrior of Germanic times, the second glorified the mysterious powers of the landscape and the life of the sturdy German peasant. At the same time there emerged a number of regional novels concerned with the theme of man’s kinship with the soil and his home, namely by Löns, Sohnrey and von Polenz.34 These works were “Volkish,” yet unpolitical in the sense that they served no political interest groups and advocated no national policy for Germany’s cultural reform. Still, the Nazis felt they were well suited for the promotion of their Volkish ideology.
According to Martin Broszat, the word “Volkish” involved a conglomerate of divergent meanings. “Hardly another word, due to its glittering power of association has so well paved the way for National Socialism as the word ‘Volkish.’ Indeed, under this term we find all kinds of ideologies from anti-semitism to ideas about the folk community; from blood-and-soil theories to the new Germanic mythos.”35
The history of the children’s literature reform movement around the turn of the century well illustrates the diverse directions which the Volkish movement itself had inspired in this area. In response to the writings of Langbehn and to their own professional conscience as educators, Lichtwark and Avenarius in Hamburg were instrumental in founding the German Art Education movement, the so-called Kunsterziehungsbewegung. They also founded the journal Der Kunstwart (The Art Guardian), and through its pages advocated the revival of art and folklore within the school curriculum and in German cultural life in general, so as to help the nation in its realization of becoming a genuine folk community. Through art and folklore they hoped to cure German civilization from insensitivities and a superficial and fragmented life style developed under the stress of a purely prosaic life. Heinrich Wolgast was a member of this movement and adopted its aesthetic principles for the field of children’s literature, while appealing to educators, writers, illustrators and publishers of children’s books in order to implement his reform suggestions.36
In 1896 Wolgast published Das Elend unserer Jugendliteratur (The Troubled State of Our Children’s Literature),37 in which he deplored the declining quality of children’s books while setting up new literary and artistic standards for their possible improvement. Wolgast was not alone in his plight. The German Jugendschriften-Bewegung (Youth Book movement or Childrens’ Literature Association) was formed by educators a few years earlier, and in 1893, the various branches of this Association in Augsburg, Berlin, Coburg, Bremen, Frankfurt a.M., Hamburg, Hildesheim, Königsberg, Nördlingen, Wiesbaden and Zerbst jointly issued the first professional children’s literature journal, the Jugendschriften-Warte (Youth Literature Guardian). At the beginning, it was published as a supplement to a major pedagogical newspaper, but then became independent under Wolgast’s editorship. Throughout its existence, until the time when the Nazis took it over for their own ideological purposes in 1933, it maintained its position beyond political interest groups while fighting for standards in children’s literature.38 Wolgast’s work set the major guidelines for the editorial committee, at least for the first decade or two. Later, an inner struggle of different reform ideas developed, in the course of which Wolgast came under attack and was partially overruled, but even today it is recognized that he laid the cornerstone of a literary criticism that elevated children’s literature from a subservient position to a well respected genre.39
The first targets of Wolgast’s criticism were publishers, writers and illustrators who for the sake of improving their income had lowered their standards to the degree that they had produced what he called Schundliteratur (trash). Under this term he grouped a great variety of books that he considered to be in poor taste by being overly sentimental, overly didactic, too trite, too “incredible” as far as their plots and characters were concerned, or merely shabby in their style and illustrations. Among these he counted not only works cheaply printed for “mass consumption” (often given away in department stores as advertisements) but also mystery, adventure and detective stories characterized by sensationalism and clichés, as well as the popular girls’ books patterned in a sentimental style after Richardson’s Pamela but within a German upper-class setting. Children would fare much better without reading these “trivia,” said Wolgast, as they were quite unrelated to good taste.
Wolgast was the first critic who called for quality control in children’s literature on the basis of literary, and artistic standards. He appealed to writers, illustrators and publishers to show their respect for the child by producing their very best. Writers should abstain from “talking down” to the child, artists should not “scribble,” and publishers should not look for business first. Significantly, Wolgast was also the first critic to voice his objection against didacticism in childrens’ literature. Gedike, Menzel, and others, in spite of their critical views, had taken for granted that childrens’ books were primarily there to teach certain things. Wolgast called the didactic trend an “abuse” of children’s literature. Whenever an interest group, be it religious, educational, political, or economic in nature, used the child’s book as a means to another end, thus reducing the story itself to a carrier of his message, it showed little respect for literature and less for the child. Children deserved respect, insisted Wolgast, and therefore, he demanded for them the best that national literature and world literature had to offer. Good quality books were meant to develop good taste in the child and to bring him in touch with humanity as a whole.40
Wolgast made a particular point of attacking children’s books that taught chauvinism. In one of his reviews he pointed out that one story character had been eager to forgive his friend the sins of lying, cheating, and stealing, but that he had been pitiless in his judgment when he found out that he had faltered in his loyalty to the fatherland. Wolgast expressed his dismay at the discovery that a writer should have placed the value of loyalty to the nation above that of respect for the Ten Commandments. This was pure chauvinism, he wrote, which was as misplaced in children’s literature as were religious and secular didacticism, business interests, or political ideologies.41
Due to Wolgast’s initiative, children’s book authors, publishers and illustrators worked together to produce several series of inexpensive paperback editions with tasteful designs and in attractive formats. These were intended to bring to young people the very best of national and world literature, thus providing a bridge for human understanding through literature. Among others, he published Schöne Kinderreime (Beautiful Children’s Rhymes), the folktales by the Brothers Grimm, a new edition of the Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs), tales by Hebel and Hauff, medieval chapbooks, memoirs of the Napoleonic wars and a children’s book version of Wilhelm Tell (William Tell), in addition to a number of children’s classics from other lands. In 1909 the Hillger Publishing Company brought out a series entitled Deutsche Jugendbücherei (German Youth Book Library), and between 1903 and 1910 the Kunstwart Publishing House, representing the Art Education movement, issued the series Der deutsche Spielmann (The German Organ Grinder), all of which contributed much to raise the quality and respectability of children’s literature in Germany. Above all, these publications showed that it was perfectly possible to combine an emphasis on national literature and folklore with a genuine interest in world literature. Wolgast’s various writings were pioneering also in regard to the development of children’s book illustrations in Germany, for in the wake of the Children’s Literature movement such famous illustrators as Ernst Kreidolf, Fritz Kredel, Else Wenz-Viëtor, Elsa Eisgruber and others produced the very best of their works.42
On several accounts Wolgast was strongly challenged, however. One of the major criticisms was voiced by Lichtenberger, on the basis that Wolgast had gone “overboard” by advocating “art for art’s sake” in children’s literature. It was wrong, he said, to apply the same aesthetic and literary criteria to children’s books as to books written for adults. Such an approach ignored all the insights gained through theories of education and psychology pertaining to child development. In the first place, it was necessary to recognize that books for children had to have “childlike” qualities (without being childish or condescending in tone or simplistic in regard to the illustrations). This meant that it would have to recognize children’s needs while appealing to the child’s way of thinking and the child’s imagination. Such an approach to criticism found strong support among the members of the Children’s Literature Association, most of whom represented teachers who were informed about child development, and it is still widely accepted today.43
The second challenge came from the Socialist Party, the SPD, claiming that Wolgast, in his over-emphasis on aesthetic criteria, had not given enough attention to the needs of workers’ children. On the contrary, his sharp criticism of so-called “tendentious literature” had come into direct conflict with the promotional efforts of the SPD and its ideology and should be retracted or amended. During an official meeting of the National Children’s Literature Association, this criticism gained a hearing, but it was not recognized as valid. Upon a long discussion of the matter, the leader of the Socialist Party retracted his own letter of complaint while in principle acknowledging the validity of the Association’s concern with quality control based on Wolgast’s ideas.44 For Wolgast himself this was a real victory.
A third and more serious challenge came from Severin Rüttgers, an educator who had well established his reputation in children’s literature circles by his publications on the literary education of elementary school children. He attacked Wolgast, and with him the entire Art Education movement, for having been too “bookish” and too “aesthetic” in their evaluation of art and literature for children. In particular, he accused Wolgast of having labelled sound patriotism in children’s books as “chauvinistic trends.” Such an approach to criticism revealed nothing less than that Wolgast himself lacked warm feelings for the fatherland, possibly because he simply lacked patriotism. As early as 1913 Rüttgers had previously denounced some trends in German education as “unpatriotic” and “sterile” on a similar basis, while coming to the conclusion that aestheticism was derived from an unhealthy overemphasis on a humanistic-classical education. Rüttgers reasoned, then and now, that as an antidote to such a trend teachers should place a greater emphasis on German and Nordic Germanic folklore in their reading curricula at all levels, so as to build up in children a love of home and country. In fact, it was quite sufficient, he wrote, if elementary school children read nothing else but German and Nordic Germanic folktales, myths, and legends, in addition to some medieval chapbooks, and, perhaps, some regional ballads.45
Much of the discussion on this issue was carried on in various issues of the Jugendschriften-Warte, especially after World War I. The editors gave equal space to Wolgast and Rüttgers, but it appeared that Wolgast was in a defensive position throughout. Nevertheless, he stated quite clearly that, while he had never denied the value of a German and Nordic Germanic folklore emphasis, he had consistently rejected chauvinism in children’s books like any other type of didacticism, be it of a religious or secular nature. Children’s books should never be used as a means to another end, he concluded emphatically.46
During the following years it became evident that Rüttgers had won the argument as far as the majority of the teachers were concerned. Although opinions were still divided among them as a professional group, the Volkish-political orientation gradually took the upper hand, and with it also the nationalistic folklore trend. Many publishing houses by the mid-twenties were printing an abundance of German and Nordic Germanic folklore for children and youth, which, in turn, made this reading material more readily available to teachers. Rüttgers himself edited the series Blaue Bändchen (Little Blue Volumes) and Quellen (Sources) and also contributed to folklore publications creatively by rewriting a number of myths and legends of the Nordic Germanic tradition for children and youth. Among these, his Nordische Heldensagen (Nordic Hero Tales) was well received by the younger generation.47
By 1922 Rüttgers had underscored the significance of national literature and folklore at a national children’s literature convention, while calling them representative of “German blood and German fate.”48 The literary critics Josef Prestel49 and Irene Graebsch50 early during the Nazi period still commended him for his strong stand on behalf of a renewal of the German national identity from the sources of German and Nordic Germanic folklore. Graebsch at that time expressed her admiration for his deep faith in “the one and only future” (die ganze und einzige Zukunft). In her view, Severin Rüttgers’ publications, along with Leopold Weber’s children’s books on Norse mythology and the Nordic sagas, Theodor Seidenfaden’s Heldenbuch (Book of Heroes), Will Vesper’s version of the Nibelungenlied, but also the regional “Volkish” tales of Blunck, Matthiessen, and Watzlik, had well prepared the ground for the new orientation under National Socialism. As the National Socialists did not yet have their own writers, she explained, it was only “natural” that they should turn to those older works that corresponded to their line of thinking.51 Prestel and Graebsch were remarkably uncritical in their evaluation of National Socialism and its uses of folklore, while presenting the case as if the Nazis were merely continuing a well established “natural” and innocent trend.
A closer examination of trends in children’s literature during the twenties will reveal, however, that they were still characterized by variety rather than uniformity, and that in the educational policy of the Weimar Republic some reform movements were underway that might have paved the way to democracy and a true concept of freedom. The folklore emphasis in the twenties was characterized by nationalistic tendencies, yet it was not yet exclusive of other cultures and traditions. A number of works appeared for children that introduced them to other lands as well. Rüttgers himself did not only publish works on Norse mythology but also on the legends of the saints, for example. His Gottesfreunde (The Friends of God) certainly did not correspond to “Volkish thought” of Nazism, and neither did Weismantel’s Blumenlegende (Flower Legends) or Arntzen’s Vom Heiland und seinen Freunden (The Savior and His Friends). Further, there was a movement toward contemporary themes in children’s books. Erich Kästner’s Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives) focused on self-reliant street boys in Berlin who in superb coordination tried to solve their own case problems. The Children’s Literature Association in Hamburg recommended this book in 1930,52 along with others that were concerned with modern problems, such as Scharrelmann’s Piddl Hundertmark (Piddl One-Hundred-Marks), Newerow’s Taschkent, die brotreiche Stadt (Tashkent, the Corn-Rich City), Beumelberg’s Sperrfeuer um Deutschland (Fire Surrounding Germany) and Remarque’s Im Westen Nichts Neues (All’s Quiet on the Western Front). It is remarkable that the last book was still recommended at this date, for three years later it was one of the first ones to be thrown onto the public bonfires and—on account of its pacifist theme—to be banished from all school and public libraries.
Translations from other languages, too, enriched the field of children’s literature during the twenties. Particularly at this time, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn met with a great success, and also Kipling’s books for young people were very popular. Quite a number of books were translated from the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, too, among them Marie Hamsun’s Langerrudkinder (The Langerrud Children), Westergaard’s Per von der Düne (Peter of the Dunes) and Floden’s Harald und Ingrid (Harald and Ingrid), although we may speculate that these works corresponded again to the Nordic orientation of the “Volkish” trend. Nevertheless, the trend was still well balanced by the classics from many lands available to children and youth in various editions. In spite of nationalistic tendencies there were no restrictions placed on international literature, as far as the public schools or libraries were concerned.53
Between 1924 and 1925 the Prussian Ministry of Education published curricular guidelines for elementary and high schools in Germany, which had been worked out in cooperation with representatives of the teaching profession. These guidelines were not mandatory, however, and left each school enough freedom to work out variations. Great emphasis was placed on cooperative planning with students. For the first time in the history of German education the use of source materials was encouraged over the use of textbooks, and students were taught to enjoy discussions and debates. This was quite a welcome change in comparison with the previous emphasis on lectures, memorizing, and drill. There was also the introduction of so-called Wandertage (hiking days) and of camps and school houses in the country meant to accommodate youngsters on field trips arranged by teachers. Both of these innovations represented an inspiration of the German Youth movement.54
Side by side there existed in the Weimar Republic liberal and Volkish-conservative thoughts, and in that sense, the era may well be called one of experimentation. The Volkish thinkers, however, slowly gained the upper hand, in education too. Next to Rüttgers there were Otto von Greyerz and Martin Havenstein who not only emphasized the use of regional literature, German and Nordic Germanic folklore, along with German history, but who also rejected “foreign” influences on German culture and education, thus trying to confine children’s reading to national literature and folklore exclusively.55
To answer the question of why these educators gained such mass support in Germany, we would have to examine the emergence of various Volkish groups in the twentieth century that favored such an attitude. First, there was the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-Germanic League), founded as early as 1894, which stated as its main platform the introduction of German folk culture into education and all spheres of life. Its constitution defined as one of its major objectives the promotion of education on the basis of German ethnicity and a simultaneous suppression of all factors deemed contrary to German national development. Among other things, this meant the prohibition of using foreign languages at club meetings, a rejection of “foreign” influences, and a replacement of foreign place names by German ones. The League consisted of 44,000 members in 1917 and had a strong impact on the “Volkish interpretation” of Gobineau’s principles of race and culture in Germany.56
Plate 2
The Wandervogel Mood Still Prevailed . . .
Another Volkish group that strongly influenced the “Nordic” orientation of German literature and culture in the twenties was the Thule Gesellschaft (Thule Society), founded in 1917 by Count Sebottendorf. It was designated as a German order of medieval knighthood in the Nordic Germanic style. Its symbol was the swastika, and its values combined nationalism with the Norseman’s code of honor. Particularly in their rituals and festivals the members of the Thule Society paid homage to the Nordic gods, while they practiced Nordic customs and traditions, including solstice celebrations in honor of Balder. The renowned publisher of folklore for young people, Eugen Diederichs, was an active member, and so were a number of prominent intellectuals who later formulated the Nazi Party program. The Society’s journal, the Völkischer Beobachter (The Volkish Observer)57, like Stapel’s journal Deutsches Volkstum (German Ethnicity), at this time made substantial use of Nordic folklore and Volkish thought for political purposes.58
In 1924, F. K. Günther published his work Ritter, Tod und Teufel (Knight, Death, and Devil) which later became the German bible of anti-semitism and was also instrumental in developing the so-called “Nordic Renaissance” in Germany that influenced the Reich Peasant Leader Walther Darré and National Socialist thought in general. The work was sponsored by the Deutsche Nationale Volkstums-Partei (German National People’s Party) which called for “a German rulership by German blood” and “a protection from foreign invaders” by censorship measures that would “purify” law, science, literature, art, and the press from “folk-alien” elements.59 Günther borrowed his symbol of the knight from Dürer, but in his theory it came to represent a mixture of Nietzsche’s ideal hero and the saga hero of the Germanic North, of racial “Volkish” strength and Odin-Wotan’s spirit of defiance.
Class, President of the Pan-Germanic League, managed to join the various Volkish-political groups in an alliance early in the twenties.60 Many of them expressed their thoughts in Bartels’ journal, Deutsches Schrifttum (German Writings).61 These various Volkish groups were neither consistent nor uniform in their racial orientation, yet they believed in promoting nationalism through native folklore and Volkish thought.
The longing for community was also a characteristic trend of the German Youth movement. It included left wing and right wing groups, Christian groups and sports organizations, young workers groups and even the German Boy Scouts. Even the most prominent group among them, the Wandervogel Bewegung (Wandering Birds movement) was split up into different ideological groups, although all of them shared with the rest a love of nature and a desire to sing, to hike, and to work together for the unity of the fatherland. The movement which began in 1901, found a common goal during the renowned meeting of all members in 1913 on Mt. Hohen Messner (near Darmstadt), and it flourished vigorously even after the First World War had taken from their midst a great number of volunteers who fell in battle. The Wandervogel Bewegung never developed into a political group or party, yet its ideological convictions exercised a strong influence on German youth, and it left its mark also on the orientation of many teacher training colleges in Germany. Being dissatisfied with the growing atomization and alienation of urban life, its egotism, and liberalism, these young people yearned to find “youth among youth” within a classless community of equals. They symbolized a kind of non-political rebellion against the stagnant life pattern of the “petit bourgeois” in society. On the other hand, the movement as a whole also contributed to conservative thought and a growing nationalism in Germany, and even though it was non-political, its racial exclusiveness (at least in some groups) coincided with some of the Nazi trends.62
Plate 3
St. George or the Norse God Odin? (Illustration from a German School Reader of 1937: An Echo of F. K. Günther’s Thoughts)
The folklore revival of the German Youth movement resembled that of the German Romantic movement, although there was a stronger emphasis here on the actual uses of folklore in outdoor activities and celebrations. On hiking trips and around campfires the young Germans would sing and strum their guitars as they enjoyed their togetherness in the small communities. Nationalism was only a part of their program, although they tended to associate the bonds that united them within their groups with the bonds of the larger folk community. Walter Flex, who also wrote a popular book about the involvement of the members of the German Youth movement in World War I in Der Wanderer zwischen zwei Welten (The Wanderer between Two Worlds), composed the leading theme for them:
To remain pure
And to grow mature:
This is the most beautiful
And most difficult art of life.63
Even more popular with German youth at that time was Hans Breuer’s Der Zupfgeigenhansel (Jack, the Guitar Strummer) that was first published in 1908.64 Many of these apparently innocent interests in nature and the outdoors, in storytelling, folk singing, and solstice celebrations (in the old Nordic Germanic style) we shall rediscover a few decades later in the Hitler Youth program.
One of the more radical of the various groups of the German Youth movement was the Artamanen movement. It was a utopian type of community founded by Willibald Hentschel in 1923, which pursued not only nature and group activities of the Wandervogel type but also some Volkish-political objectives. Officially it stood for the “fight for German ethnicity”—a theme which we encounter again in many variations in the Nazis’ reading primers for young people. Like the Nazis at a later date, the Artamanen made active use of Nordic Germanic folklore, particularly in rituals and festivals designed to arouse their members to a feeling of “unity” for their common cause. Part of their program was to settle young Germans as peasants in the Eastern Provinces, particularly where they thought that German ethnic identity was endangered by foreign cultural influences. In 1925 the initial group of the Artamanen had only 140 members, but the idea for which they stood evidently caught on, for two years later their membership had grown to 1,800. Much of what we consider an integral part of the Nazi ideology, including the Nordic Germanic orientation and the emphasis on the peasant cult, was derived from the influence of the Artamanen on the Nazi leaders. Walther Darré, Reich Peasant Leader and also Agricultural Minister under Hitler, was a member of this movement,65 and Heinrich Himmler, Reich Leader of the SS, was for some time a leader of the Bavarian Artamanen group. After 1933, the Nazis formally integrated the Artamanen into the Reichssiedlungsamt (Reich Settlement Office), and from their settlement program and community service the Nazis developed the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Workers Service). | Rödiger, | Eisenbeck, | and Kretschmer of the Reich Workers Service, were all former members of the Artamanen, thus providing a direct line of continuity.66 Robert Proksch, Head of the Reichsamt für Deutsche Bauernbevölkerung (Reich Office for the German Peasant Population) was also a former member of the Artamanen and continued to appraise its history even after Hitler’s seizure of power. Proksch saw a direct influence of the Artamanen on the Nazis’ determination to conquer the “living space areas” (Lebensraumgebiete) in Eastern Europe.67 The Artamanen, he said, believed in strength based on culture and race, as well as on God’s deepest knowledge. Their “blood-and-soil” concept motivated young people to become peasants and to move across the German frontiers into the Eastern Provinces, so as to “fight for German ethnicity” (it.), thus helping the nation as a whole. To achieve their objectives, the Artamanen felt that it was necessary to cultivate German and Nordic Germanic folklore within dramatic settings, so as to build up a “sense of community” among Germans at home and abroad.68 In that sense they considered folklore as a “weapon” in the struggle toward national unity.
The Nazis were quick to seize upon these ideas for their own purposes. In the Wandervogel movement and the Artamanen movement they perceived perfect examples of how German and Nordic Germanic folklore could be applied to festivals and rituals in such a way as to enhance the “feeling for community”—something toward which they aspired through their “folk education” program. Undoubtedly, they received some of their ideas from Severin Rüttgers, too, who, in various contexts, had emphasized the need to place folklore into “action,” in order to develop in children a strong emotional identifiction with the community of the nation. In earlier publications on literary education for elementary school children Rüttgers had begun to defend the idea that it was not enough to read folktales, myths, and legends but that children should experience (it.) them in the context of festivals and celebrations. His 1933 edition of Erweckung des Volkes durch seine Dichtung (The Awakening of the Nation through Its Literature) essentially underscored the need to employ children’s literature and folklore for Volkish-political purposes.69
The very fact that the Nazis did borrow a substantial number of ideas and customs from earlier Volkish groups and individuals, however, does not necessarily imply that these may be held responsible for their misuses within the Nazi Regime. Undoubtedly, some of the “roots” of Volkish thought came rather close to the Nazi ideology, and in extreme cases were identical with some of its aspects. Still, in pre-Nazi times, none of the writers or groups had ever attempted to adopt its ideology exclusively for the entire nation and to implement it by force, while making children’s literature and folklore their instrument of Volkish propaganda. Nevertheless, it appears clear that the Nazis did not invent ethnocentric and racial ideas based on the concept of German ethnicity.
In 1933, the German Youth movement was formally dissolved to make room for the Hitler Youth Organization under the leadership of Baldur von Schirach. Many of its members joined the ranks of the Hitler Youth in the hope that 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 mythology, and so did others after him. One of the finest essay collections pertaining to the Grimm Brothers’ contributions to international folklore research is Wilhelm v. Steinitz Fraenzer, ed., Jacob Grimm zur 100. Wiederkehr seines Todestages. Festschrift. (Berlin, Akademischer Verlag, 1968). For a treatment of The Grimm Brothers’ literary influence in Great Britain consult Violet A. Stockley, German Literature as Known in England: 1750–1830 (London: Routledge and Sons, 1929).
18. Hermann Gerstner, Die Brüder Grimm: Biographie mit 48 Bildern. (Gerabonn, Crailsheim, Hohenloher Verlag, 1970), pp. 203–220. For a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between the Grimms’ study of folklore and linguistics see also Carl Zuckmayer, Die Brüder Grimm: Ein deutscher Beitrag zur Humanität (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1948) Zuckmayer showed that poetic and scientific theories were the strongest motivating factors in the work of the Brothers Grimm, although he did not deny some of their nationalistic inclinations and sentiments.
19. Hans Dahmen, Die nationale Idee von Herder bis Hitler (Cologne, Hermann Schaffstein Verlag, 1934) and Julius Petersen, “Die Sehnsucht nach dem Dritten Reich in deutscher Sage und Dichtung” Dichtung und Volkstum, Vol. 35, 1 (1934) pp. 18–40. (Two parts). This line of interpretation was representative of most critics during the Nazi Regime, as it corresponded to the official Party policy. See also: Heinz Kindermann, Dichtung und Volkheit: Grundzüge einer neuen Literaturwissenschaft (Berlin, Volksverlag, 1937).
20. Even during the time of the Romantic movement itself we may observe a movement from literature to politics. The Jena group is usually associated with the first, the Heidelberg group with the second type. See Walzel, pp. 140–144.
21. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn indicated in his earliest Deutsches Volkstum (German Ethnicity) which appeared in 1810, that the German folk community was a reality within the German folk state. Like Arndt, however, he rejected a centralized control. See Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York, Scribner’s, 1960), pp. 124–126. See also: Friedrich Meinecke, The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 215.
22. Georg Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1964), p. 153.
23. Ernst Moritz Arndt, Märchen und Jugenderinnerungen in Werke ed. by Leffson and W. Steffens, Vols. I and III (Berlin, Bony, 1913). Other references to Arndt’s fairy tales in Tismar, p. 32.
24. Kohn, pp. 69–78, and Paul Kluckhorn, Das Ideengut der deutschen Romantik (Tübingen, Wunderlich Verlag, 1961), pp. 60–101.
25. Mosse, pp. 14–30.
26. Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, Die Naturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, ed. by Dr. Hans Naumann and Dr. Rolf Haller (Leipzig, Reclam, 1934.) See in particular the preface pointing out the “relevance” of Riehl to the Nazi ideology. Also: Julius Petersen, Die Wesensbestimmung der deutschen Romantik (Leipzig, Dürr, 1926), pp. 9–10. Petersen explains the more recent preference for Jahn, Arndt, and Goerres over German Romantic writers that were more concerned with literature and poetry per se. This preference foreshadows the selective approach of Nazism to the Romantic period and Volkish writers in general.
27. Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie (Berlin, Volks-Verlag, 1926). See also: Ralf Dahrendorf, “Soziologie und Nationalsozialismus” in Andreas Flitner, ed., Deutsches Geistesleben und Nationalsozialismus. Eine Vortragsreihe der Universität Tübingen (Tübingen, Rainer Wunderlich Verlag, 1965), pp. 117–119.
28. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (New York, Anchor, 1965), Introduction. Nietzsche associates here the powerful spirit of Wagner with that of Dionysus. In both he perceives an inspiration by the irrational forces of life that he considers the necessary complements to rational and aesthetic concepts.
29. Paul de Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften (originally published in 1874) (Munich, Dürr, 1924), pp. 276–277. Alfred Rosenberg cited him in Mythos of the Twentieth Century. See Henry Hatfield, “The Myth of Nazism” in Henry Murray, ed., Myth and Mythmaking (New York, Putnam’s Sons 1960), pp. 199–239. One of the most authoritative studies on de Lagarde and his influences is Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1961). See also Mosse, pp. 31–51.
30. Julius Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher (Leipzig, Selbstverlag, 1927). (Originally, the work was published anonymously and merely bore the reference: “Von einem Deutschen” (By a German).
31. In a Nazi-oriented analysis, Hippler excuses de Lagarde in that, unfortunately, in his time racial theories had only partially been developed. See Fritz Hippler, Staat und Gesellschaft bei Mill, Marx, Lagarde. Ein Beitrag zum soziologischen Denken der Gegenwart (Berlin, Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1937), p. 161 and p. 230.
32. Bartels was a student of Professor Sauer who taught a “Volkish approach” to literature in Prague. Nadler, in turn, was Bartels’ student. See Josef Nadler, Literaturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes: Dichtung der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften (Berlin, Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1941).
33. On behalf of Jahn’s and Arndt’s concept of the individual consult Kohn, p. 215, and also: Wolfgang Emmerich, Zur Kritik der Volkstumsideologie (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1961), pp. 24–26. According to de Lagarde himself, the German character was distinguished by his originality and his quest for independence and solitude. See de Lagarde, p. 278. It should be noted, however, that the Romantic and “Volkish” writers did recognize the individual’s “organic links” with ethnic groups based on language, culture, and tradition.
34. See Horst Geissler, Dekadenz und Heroismus. Zeitroman und nationalsozialistische Literaturkritik (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1964), p. 50 and pp. 250–257.
35. Martin Broszat, Die nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung: Programm und Wirklichkeit (Series: Schriftenreihe der niedersächsischen Landeszentrale für politische Bildung. Heft No. 8) (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1960), pp. 1–5.
36. Irene Graebsch, Geschichte des deutschen Jugendbuches (Leipzig, A. Harrassowitz, 1942), pp. 193–196. See also: Franz Schonauer, Deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich (Freiburg im Breisgau, Walter Verlag, 1961), pp. 28–30. Schonauer made the distinction between the Aesthetic movement and the Volkish movement within the Art Education movement.
37. Heinrich Wolgast, Das Elend unserer Jugendliteratur. Beiträge und künstlerische Erziehung unserer Jugend (Hamburg, Selbstverlag, 1950). The work was first published in 1896.
38. “Was Wir Wollen” (Editorial) Jugendschriften-Warte I (1893), pp. 1–7.
39. Graebsch, pp. 116–124 and Prestel, pp. 90–98.
40. Wolgast became the Chief Editor of the Jugendschriften-Warte and was supported in his ideals and endeavors by the German Children’s Literature Association for more than a decade—until Rüttgers challenged him. Kunze, pp. 66–69.
41. Ibid. Reprinted on pp. 80–81. The review originally appeared in 1894.
42. Graebsch, pp. 201–220.
43. Ibid.
44. Clara Zetkin, SPD Protokoll vom Parteitag der SPD 1916, Mannheim. For a documentation consult Kunze, p. 74 and p. 80.
45. Severin Rüttgers, Deutsche Dichtung in der Volksschule (Leipzig, Dürr’sche Buchhandlung, 1914) and Erweckung des Volkes durch seine Dichtung (Leipzig, Dürr’sche Buchhandlung, 1919). The second work was reprinted by Dürr in 1933, after the Nazis’ seizure of power.
46. Graebsch, pp. 195–210 and Kunze, pp. 67–70.
47. The series Blaue Bändchen and Grüne Bändchen included not only folktales, chapbooks and regional legends, as well as Nordic Germanic myths and hero tales, but regional novels (Heimatbücher), too. Other series were inspired by Rüttgers but not edited by him, such as the Wiesbadener Volksbücher and Bunte Jugendbücher. See also Georg Lukácz, Die Zerstörung der Vernunft Berlin, Luchterhand, 1955), pp. 551–552.
48. This refers to a comment made by John Barfaut. See Peter Aley, Jugendliteratur im Dritten Reich: Dokumente und Kommentare (Hamburg, Verlag für Buchmarktforschung, 1969), p. 215.
49. Prestel, pp. 91–95.
50. Graebsch, p. 225.
51. Ibid. See also H.L. Köster, Geschichte der deutschen Jugendliteratur (Munich-Pullach, Verlag Dokumentation, 1968) 4th ed.
52. Hamburger Prüfungsausschüsse, (Hamburg Committee on the Evaluation of Children’s Literature) “Liste gegenwartsbetonter Bücher” (1933) cited in Graebsch, pp. 226–227.
53. Ibid., pp. 228–230.
54. Susanne Charlotte Engelmann, German Education and Re-Education (New York, International University Press, 1945), Chapter 2.
55. Peter Hasubek, Das Deutsche Lesebuch in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturpädagogik zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Hannover, Hermann Schroedel Verlag, 1972), Introduction.
56. Mosse, pp. 218–225. The citation stems from Lewis Hertzmann, DNVP. Right Wing Opposition in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1924 (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1963), p. 162. See also: Werner Maser, Die Frühgeschichte der N.S.D.A.P.: Hitlers Weg bis 1924 (Frankfurt, Athenaeum), pp. 258–259.
57. Hans Joachim Gamm, Der braune Kult: Das Dritte Reich und seine Ersatzreligion. Ein Beitrag zur politischen Bildung (Hamburg, Rütten und Loening, 1962), pp. 188–206.
58. Mosse, p. 229. Other Volkish-political groups were: Völkischer Schutzund Trutzbund; Reichskammerbund; Hochschulring deutscher Art. The last one especially influenced higher education in regard to the “Nordic Renaissance.”
59. Ibid., pp. 302–303.
60. Ibid., pp. 224–225.
61. Adolf Bartels, Deutsches Schrifttum: Jüdische Herkunft und Literaturwissenschaft (Leipzig, H. Haessel Verlag, 1921).
62. For a general discussion consult Werner Klose, Lebensformen deutscher Jugend: Vom Wandervogel zur Popgeneration (Munich, Günter Olzog Verlag, 1970), and Harry Pross, Vor und nach Hitler: Zur deutschen Sozialpathalogie (Freiburg/Breisgau, Walter Verlag, 1962), Chapter 1. Also: Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York, Basic Books, 1962).
63. Flex, cited by Laqueur, p. 47. Flex’s work was first published in Munich, 1916, and it went through numerous re-editions. During the Nazi period it was among the ten works with the highest number of copies printed, partially because it had retained popularity, and partially because the Nazis promoted it actively within the context of the Hitler Youth Organization. See Dietrich Strothmann, Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik (Bonn, Bouvier, 1968), pp. 91; 257; 381. For a general discussion of Flex’s contributions to the Youth movement, consult Kurt Hohoff, Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit (Düsseldorf, August Bage Verlag, 1964), pp. 324–235. The following analysis represents an analysis of the German Youth movement by one of its former members: Friedrich Kayser, “Wandervogel, Idee und Wirklichkeit; Gedanken einer Selbstdarstellung der deutschen Jugendbewegung” (typescript). Sender Freies Berlin, “Kulturelles Wort,” June 13, 1962, Document. Collection Title: The German Youth Movement Collection, No. 956. Hoover Institution Archives, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, California.
64. Graebsch, pp. 125–126.
65. Document. Collection title: The German Youth Movement Collection No. 956, Folder 3, pp. 60–64. Typescript on “Die Artamanen.”
66. Ibid., pp. 69–75.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Severin Rüttgers, Erweckung des Volkes durch seine Dichtung (Leipzig, Dürr, 1933). Consult also Aley, pp. 13–18 and p. 215.
70. Pross, pp. 1–30. Consult also: Kurt Sonthheimer, “Das Reich der Unpolitischen. Die Jugendbewegung vor 1933” (typescript). Südwestfunk, Jugendfunk. Program of October 18, 1961, 11 p.m. Document: The German Youth Movement Collection No. 956, Folder 6, pp. 10–14.
71. Ibid. Consult also: “Wie ich die H.J. sah und erlebte” (anonymous typescript). Document. Collection title: T.S. National Socialism No. 467. Hoover Institution Archives, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, California. The document is mainly concerned with a description of the “Volkish illusion” that originally inspired many of the young followers of the Nazi Regime, particularly those among the older Hitler Youth. In the same folder consult also: “Einfluss der H.J. auf die Jugend” (typescript).
72. Rudolf Hurtfield, “Severin Rüttgers als Erwecker des Sinnes für volkhafte Dichtung” Jugendschriften-Warte 44, 1 (January, 1939), 6–10.
