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2

From Book Burning Toward Gleichschaltung

The first indications of an emerging cultural policy in Germany were barely noticed by the general public. On April 13, 1933 the German Student Association posted a twelve point “Proclamation” at the entrance doors of the University of Berlin, demanding from the universities a greater sense of responsibility toward the German race, the German language, and German literature.¹ This demand essentially corresponded to the direction of the Nazis’ cultural policy to be implemented just a few weeks later, yet it appeared to be spontaneous and no more than the usual sign of political unrest among the German student groups. Even when three weeks later the Frankfurter Zeitung announced the explicit demand by the German Student Association to remove all “un-German” books from the libraries,² the public did not feel alerted to systems of control that soon would permeate all spheres of German cultural and political life.

The book burning ceremonies, that began on May 10, 1933 in the public squares of numerous German cities, were also ascribed to the initiative of some radical students, although the presence of prominent professors and Party and State representatives during these occasions placed the events in a different light. The cities affected included Cologne, Bonn, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg, Würzburg, and Berlin.³ In Berlin, Josef Goebbels, the German Reich Minister of Propaganda, personally sanctioned the action by a public address while the books were still smoldering in the ashes. “One thing we know for sure,” he said, “namely that political revolutions will have to be prepared from a spiritual basis. At their beginning there always stands an idea, and only if the idea has been merged with power, will the historical miracle of a reform movement occur, and only then it will rise and develop.”⁴

The “spiritual basis” to which Goebbels referred, was already essentially prepared in a rough outline by the students who dramatically stepped forward toward the bonfires and solemnly recited the “sins” of the authors whose works they committed to the flames. As one after another would state what books were needed in Germany at the present time, they would condemn certain authors while recommending others—both in line with “Volkish” criteria. Thus, they denounced Marx and Kautsky for emphasizing class struggle and Marxism. They would blame Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, Erich Kästner, Friedrich Wilhelm and Sigmund Freud for having promoted a spirit of “decadence, moral decay, sloppy thinking, political treason, and eroticism,” whereas they accused Emil Ludwig and Werner Hegemann of having “falsified German history and degraded the great German heroes of the past,” and Theodor Wolff and Georg Bernhard of having created a “folk-alien journalism of the democratic and Jewish type.” Erich Maria Remarque they charged with “literary treason” against the German soldiers fighting so bravely in World War I; Alfred Kerr, with having “crippled the German language,” and Tucholsky and Ossietzky with having sinned against the German ethnic spirit by showing “a lack of respect for the German folk soul.”⁵

The recommendations followed the same order. The first student praised the idea of the German folk community which from then on literature should portray in idealistic terms. The second one demanded that books be faithful to the German people and the state. The third requested of literature that it portray the “nobility of the German soul,” and the fourth reminded all German authors that their works should reveal respect for German history, the spirit of the ancestors, and the spirit of the past. Others still referred to the necessity of promoting a type of literature that would show reverence for the German folk spirit by concerning itself with the love of home and nation, a search for the “roots” of German national identity, with native folklore and history, and a respect for “honesty and truth.” As such, it should be the goal of all literature to serve the German folk community rather than to express the “selfish” interests of its authors. The ceremonies took place at night, illuminated by dramatic torchlight processions and accompanied by marching bands of the military and police. Singing and cheerleading further dramatized the events which neither the public nor the press could overlook.⁶

Plate 5

Traditional Bonfires in Support of the New “Fate Community”

For those who were directly affected by the “witch hunt” action, there were not too many alternatives left. Erich Kästner, for example, in an interview a few years ago, commented that in personally witnessing the book burning ceremonies in which his own works were condemned, he would have liked to shout back at “them” through the microphone, yet instead, he only clenched his fists in his pockets.⁷ Then during the same night he and his friends had urged the writer Ossietzky to flee the country, yet Ossietzky had decided to stay and “fight back” as well as he might.⁸ Others were less optimistic. When Goebbels dissolved the Prussian Academy of Literature and dismissed a substantial portion of its membership while appointing new members to take their places in the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Literature Chamber), Thomas Mann,⁹ and Ricarda Huch resigned voluntarily. As a branch of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber), which Goebbels founded to control art, literature, theater, press, radio, music and film, the Reich Literature Chamber no longer was meant as a place for a free exchange of ideas but as a censorship organization. Huch was especially enraged that Goebbels’ “miracle of a reform movement” had resulted in Döblin’s dismissal on racial grounds. In her letter of resignation, she wrote among other things:

It appears quite natural to me that each German citizen should feel as a German. And yet, there are various opinions as to what it means to be a German and how Germandom should assert itself. What the present regime prescribes as “national consciousness” does not correspond to my understanding of Germandom. I consider it as un-German to centralize all power, to use force and brutal methods, and to defame those who think differently.¹⁰

The defamation of those who thought differently indeed had begun very early. After the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin, Göring proceeded to arrest thousands of Communist suspects all over Germany.¹¹ In the name of the State, he had armed the regular police force, adding to it 25,000 S.A. men and 10,000 SS men, which during the election days in Berlin alone arrested 5,000 persons.¹² Only two days after the Reichstag incident, Hitler suspended all normal civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution while turning the Secret Service into an instrument of terror. This meant that Germans were denied freedom of speech and of the press, the freedom to gather in groups, as well as the freedom of privacy regarding mail, telegrams, and telephone calls. Anyone who acted suspiciously or was overheard saying something against the Nazi Regime could be arrested and detained without trial.¹³ Even before this time, the Party would send its agents to public lectures and gatherings of groups, and it was known to have dispersed meetings when speakers uttered even some harmless jokes at the expense of the Party. Intellectuals experienced harrassment if they were suspected of dissent, and early as May, 1933 there were arrests, imprisonments and reported mistreatments of those who disagreed openly with the Party’s policy.¹⁴

During the year 1933 a total of 1,684 academics lost their jobs. Among these were 781 professors, 322 instructors, 42 lecturers, 232 assistants, 133 academic employees at scientific institutions, and 174 persons of academic rank working in schools, libraries, and museums.¹⁵ Among these, undoubtedly, were those who were dismissed on racial grounds, but there were also others who had “shouted back at them” in the way that Kaestner would have liked to do.

Simultaneously with the Nazis’ purge of academics and intellectuals there occurred the “cleansing” of the libraries and school libraries. Party and State authorities followed up the public book burning ceremonies so thoroughly that the public no longer was held in doubt who had instigated the “book purge” in the first place. In Bonn alone 20,000 books were thrown into the flames. In Berlin 70,000 tons of books were removed from the libraries. Books were no longer counted but merely measured in terms of estimated weight.¹⁶ By mid-May, 1933 the action had spread to the smaller towns in Germany, where local authorities were placed in charge of removing the “undesirable” literature from the library shelves.¹⁷ It is estimated that in this process about one-third of all library holdings in Germany was destroyed.¹⁸ This affected not only general literature but also children’s literature. Whatever the authorities considered “folk-alien” or “decadent,” whatever appeared to promote the spirit of Bolshevism, liberalism or internationalism, or whatever had been written by Jewish authors was condemned to go to the incinerator, the public bonfire or the scrap paper collection. While in the beginning the book “purge” was carried out somewhat erratically, following only the general guidelines and “black lists” of Goebbels, eventually it was stabilized within the context of a gigantic censorship apparatus of Party and State authorities that screened every book that was printed, sold, purchased or circulated.

The only consistent factor from the very beginning was the National Socialist ideology. In spite of lapses in the implementation of censorship at various levels, the National Socialist ideology determined a cultural policy in which Volkish-political views prevailed throughout the Nazi Regime. Rooted in the “organic” concepts of folk and community, it selectively emphasized Volkish thought of pre-Nazi times while calling for a new unity of the German Reich under the swastika flag. The frequent references of the Nazi ideologists and Hitler himself to such concepts as the “folk spirit,” the “folk soul,” the “folk tradition,” and the “folk community” harkened back to earlier times when Herder, Grimm, Jahn, and Arndt, and later Langbehn, de Lagarde, and Moeller van den Bruck had appealed to the German people to unite in their quest for unity and German ethnic identity.¹⁹

Plate 6

A New Call for Unity and Community

While a number of intellectuals in those early days of the Nazi Regime just “played along” in the hope that one day things would change for the better, while contributing their required amount of “Volkish thought” to literary, educational, and scientific journals, without taking themselves too seriously in this role, others were genuinely enthusiastic about the Party’s “Volkish” ideology. Unlike Ricarda Huch who had premonitions about the nightmare of a totalitarian super-power that was only in its childhood stages, others welcomed the rise of a “folk state” as a fulfillment of their pre-Nazi “Volkish” dreams about ethnic identity, unity, and community. Nolte commented that when on February 1st the masses joined the mammoth torchlight processions in honor of the “People’s Chancellor,” they did not react to mere propaganda but to their heartfelt hope that Hitler would realize their dreams of a unified folk community built on German faith, morality, and honor, and that he would re-establish pride in German history and heroism while making the Germans more idealistic in fighting for a common cause. Many famous philosophers, professors, and writers tended to look at the Nazis’ “Volkish” cultural policy in optimistic terms.²⁰ Whereas on the one hand they perceived in it a continuation of Volkish ideas prevailing in the twenties, they did not think that it was necessarily opposed to Christianity either. Hitler himself had promoted this illusion by stating in Mein Kampf that National Socialism not only stood for “neutrality” in regard to the domain of the churches, but that both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church were needed to build the true community spirit of the German Volk.²¹ The Concordat of July, 1933 further supported the notion that the Catholic Church would be able to pursue its goals and preserve its rights, provided it would agree to a clear separation of State and Church. Little did the public realize that this agreement actually served Hitler personally, as it led to the dissolution of the Catholic Labor Union which he feared as a rival.²² In his 1934 speech in Marburg, von Papen further gave the appearance that the Nazis were not at all inclined to foster a “Volkish” dictatorship at the expense of the Christian conscience and the concept of a united Christendom in Europe. Whatever might look somewhat “extreme” in regard to the Nazis’ practical politics, he assured his audience, was only to be understood as the result of some temporary measures, and it was the Party’s goal to achieve the freedom of every member of the German folk community, including his voluntary participation in the work of the folk community.²³

During the National Convention of the German Teachers Association in Magdeburg in June, 1933, Hans Schemm, President of the Association, used similar rhetoric to von Papen by reminding his colleagues that the German folk community under National Socialism actually stood for the “unity of Christianity,” and that both the Catholic and the Protestant churches now stood united in its cause.²⁴ Schemm’s speech was greeted with strong applause, and then all of the 155 regional delegates, one by one, stepped forward and signed a document committing them formally to the Party’s policy of Gleichschaltung (coordination), which also implied a submission to censorship. There were no abstentions. In retrospect, we realize that it was dangerous for individuals at that time to express their dissent openly, for in practice the Gleichschaltung was already enforced by the power politics of Party and State. Some sources made available after World War II indicate that during the Convention opinions among teachers were actually still divided among those who supported Wolgast’s liberal ideas on behalf of education through children’s literature and those who joined Rüttgers’ call to follow the “God-given leadership of the Führer.”²⁵

Still, it was not clear to many educators among the latter group of enthusiasts that Hitler actually was out to reverse the Romantic concept of the Volk (folk). To the Nazis, it embodied what one ideologist called “the essential reality of race, tradition, mythos, and fate”²⁶ and what another one appraised as “the very spirit of homogeneity, solidarity, and organization”²⁷—an idea that soon was to be echoed on thousands of Nazi posters bearing the slogan: “Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Führer!” (One Folk! One Reich! One Leader!). In contrast to the Romantic concept, the Nazis’ concept no longer stood for diversity within unity, but it implied a uniformity that made no allowance for individual differences. By abolishing the opposition and by levelling the “subjective element,” the Nazis hoped to form a society that was totally committed to the Führer and the National Socialist ideology.

According to Meinecke, Hitler seized upon the idea of the “folk community” for two particular reasons: to get rid of the class-egotistical nationalism promoted by the heavy industry patrons of the bourgeoisie and to overtrump the Marxism of the Russian Bolshevists. While trying to preserve the natural groupings of society, he felt that they must be steered around and educated to serve a community including all of them. From the “Aryan racial point of view” it was a convenient means to transcend all social differences while boosting the average man’s self image. The economic recovery, the reduction of unemployment, and large-scale recreation and travel programs for workers further strengthened the popular appeal of this concept.²⁸

The Romantic concept of the “folk” was closely linked with that of the “community,” but in their interpretation of these concepts the Romantic writers had granted the individual the freedom to select his own associations and to formulate his unique aesthetic, intellectual or political ideas. Both cultural and political Romanticism had thus been characterized by “diversity in unity” as far as their “Volkish” aspirations had been concerned. The Nazis consciously employed an ambiguous language to simulate this tradition. When Rosenberg, as the Nazis’ chief ideologist, announced that the National Socialist Cultural Community (Nationalsozialistische Kulturgemeinde) had set as its ultimate goal the revival of German folk culture, this appeal sounded like an echo of Romantic thought and found a sympathetic reception by the German population who welcomed the idea of a cultural renewal on the basis of native folklore and the Nordic Germanic folk heritage.²⁹

Rosenberg defined the Nazi ideology ambiguously as “an attitude rather than a dogma”³⁰ while referring to its objectives of forming the German people’s attitudes toward the “fighting spirit” of the German nation. He began his career as Chief of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Fighter League for German Culture) in 1927, with the goal to counteract the “rootless” and “decadent” life of the cities by a return to the “healthy sources” of German nationhood still to be found among the peasants in the countryside. Later, this League was merged with the Kulturamt or Kulturgemeinde (Culture Office or Cultural Community) in the Third Reich that came entirely under Rosenberg’s sphere of influence.³¹

From the beginning, Rosenberg’s interest in the German cultural community was colored by his fascination with the Nordic Germanic folk heritage. He worked closely with the Nordische Gesellschaft (Nordic Society) and even sponsored its major journal Der Norden (The North).³² Over several years, he tried to promote cultural exchange programs among German and Scandinavian writers and artists and also cooperated with the Reichsbund für deutsche Vorgeschichte (Reich Office for German Prehistory) on behalf of drawing up plans for a national institute dedicated to Nordic Germanic history and folklore. Throughout his career, he maintained intimate contacts with the Institut für deutsche Volkskunde (Institute for German Folklore), and even sponsored the publication of folklore journals by his Office.³³ These ties are important to remember if we consider the Nordic Germanic orientation of the National Socialist ideology and the significant role which German and Nordic Germanic folklore came to play in the Nazis’ cultural politics.

Even the concept of folklore had changed its meaning since Romantic times, for the Nazis remained ambiguous about the distinction between the traditional folk heritage on the one hand and the new values of the folk state on the other. This was one of the major reasons why the status of folklore, as a science, was called into question after the war.³⁴ The National Socialists further confused the terms “Nordic,” “Germanic,” “Nordic Germanic,” and “German,” so as to create the impression that the present regime was merely a natural extension of the traditional past. To the Nazis, ambiguity itself served as an ideological tool.³⁵ Even Rosenberg’s Cultural Community assumed the appearance of a “continuity” of thought in regard to what the art critic Strzgowski called “Germany’s return to the Indo-Germanic North of Europe. “While it paid homage to Nordic Germanic traditions and “Volkish thought” it also pretended to continue the Nordic Faith movement led by Bergmann and Günther in the twenties.³⁶ Only to some more critical minds it was evident that the Nazis had changed the original “faith community” into a “fate community” determined by the fighting spirit of National Socialism and its goal of political action.

Plate 7

Dr. Johann von Leers, History on Racial Foundations

As children were to become the most prominent members of such a future “fate community,” and as all of children’s literature during the Third Reich was subordinated to the Nazis’ Volkish ideology, we may do well to take a closer look at its meaning. The Nazis’ definition of ideological goals echoed the Romantic quest for an “organic” unity and a metaphysical “totality,”³⁷ although the new context changed its meaning to a “total sacrifice” of the individual to the state and a denial of existence of the individual outside of the folk community. According to Dr. Gross, Director of the Racial-Political Office, the system of liberalism had created an “individualistic society” that was basically “unfree” in spirit. In order to regain his true freedom, he said, every individual should sacrifice his desires and goals entirely to the State. Only in this sense could he become a true “folk personality” that had the right to a so-called “higher existence.” Like most of the Nazi ideologists, Gross appealed to the spirit of altruism and idealism when he spoke about the individual’s contributions to the folk community:

The human being no longer is a separate entity all by himself . . . Born into the community of his people, he will feel the bond of the blood, and he will consider it the ultimate goal of his life to contribute his very best to the prosperity and preservation of this larger unit . . . Thus, it should come quite naturally to him that the meaning of his life no longer is bound up with his own small ego but with the community of his folk to whom he owes his life. His fate is inseparably linked with the destiny of his people.³⁸

The Nazis identified the concept of the individual as “the essence of selfishness” under the influence of liberalism that National Socialism had to overcome. Instead, they hailed the “folk personality.” Far from being a “personality” as Goethe had understood it in regard to a liberally educated person striving all of his life toward creative selffulfillment, the new “folk personality” was supposed to “fit into the whole of the community by submitting himself to all of its subsequent rights and duties.”³⁹ In essence, it was the prototype of the “New Man” of the future, as the Nazis envisioned him. While contemplating the Nazi slogan “Gemeinnutz geht über Eigennutz!” (The Welfare of the Community has Priority over the Welfare of the Individual!), the literary critic Langenbucher explained that life in the folk community was the only life style that would guarantee to a person a “higher existence.”⁴⁰

In children’s literature publications of the Nazi period such imperative statements were a common occurrence, as they formed an integral part of “folk education” to which literature was subordinated. Children’s book authors usually would talk about the “noble goals” and “honorable obligations” of every individual to submit himself to the interests of the folk community. In one case, an author described this attitude as one requiring “an ethical sincerity, a deep inwardness, and a complete dedication to a given work or task,”⁴¹ while another one warmly reminded his readers: “You are a part of the great German folk. This folk is a community which can exist only if all of its members are part and parcel of socialism. This means: think of the welfare of the whole, but remember, too, that in relation to the whole you are only a part.”⁴²

Germandom as a “spiritual task” lay at the very core of “folk education” which Rosenberg pursued in general terms with his Cultural Community, and which Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust followed up through school and library reforms. In broad terms, “folk education” meant “community education” in the spirit of the National Socialist ideology. Ernst Krieck, who is generally considered the chief theorist of Nazi education, emphasized in this process the significance of Nordic Germanic folklore. Folklore itself would have to be transformed into a “total and politically oriented science,” he said, “taking its orientation directly from the folk, in order to meet present-day standards.”⁴³ This meant, of course, that folklore would have to blend old folk traditions with National Socialist values, so as to be of help in forming the “young team” of the future. Krieck was against a materialistic interpretation of race, and in fact, saw in such a view the direct reversal of its “real meaning.” To him, as much as to Rosenberg, race and blood in and by themselves did not have meaning but took on significance only if they were matched by a “racial attitude” that he identified alternately as “Nordic,” “Faustic,” or as “the will toward fate.” In modelling the “attitude toward fate” on the attitude of the Nordic Germanic peasant warriors and the saga heroes of the Nordic Germanic past, Krieck hoped to instill in young people a sense of determination to fight for the preservation of Germandom at all cost.⁴⁴

In National Socialist “folk education” Professor Krieck and others pursued the idea that the “concrete” concept of the German folk community had replaced the “abstract” concept of humanity at large,⁴⁵ and that it was the first obligation of all writers and educators to instill in young people a genuine feeling for the “need” to sacrifice the personal will to the “will of the state.” Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust commented on behalf of the new National Socialist goals of education: “German youth now has shaken off the fetters of foreign cultures and accepted a life of masculine discipline including a willingness to sacrifice individual desires to the needs of the community. Thus, they have gained a new conception of community that, over a span of thousands of years, connects them with the heroic youth of Sparta.”⁴⁶ Far from advocating a Greek model for German children and youth, however, Rust presented them with ideals of their Nordic Germanic “forefathers” who, as peasants and warriors, had tilled the soil and defended their tribes. He felt that especially after the internal divisions of Germany following World War I, it was of primary significance for National Socialism to provide youth with a new purpose in life and a deep faith in their folk heritage, their identity, and their destiny.⁴⁷

To Krieck, as well as to Rust, Rosenberg and others, the Nazi ideology inevitably resulted in a peasant and ancestor cult that were both endowed with National Socialist meanings and objectives. In this context German and Nordic Germanic folklore assumed a new role in cultural politics, and also in children’s literature, as they were meant to serve as a “political science.” Folklorist Schmidt commented early in the thirties: “Although folklore is never rigid or absolutely at rest, it does represent a steady and permanent force. As the product of the native soil, it is an expression of the cultural community spirit, and as such, it reflects the folk soul but also the ideology of our culture.”⁴⁸ He perceived in the new dual role of folklore a “catalytic force” capable of counteracting the instability, mobility, and diversity of city life and also, of bringing about a new unity of the German folk under the leadership of the National Socialist Party. It was because of its assumed “rootedness” in Nordic Germanic peasant traditions that Krieck considered the Nazi ideology neither an “invention” of National Socialism nor a temporary means to support arbitrary politics but a “permanent force” of German culture. And yet, he did not regard it as a mere “inheritance” either but rather as an “obligation” to the future. The Nordic Germanic leaders and their followers had presented the Germans with heroic models that should provide old and young with a “stimulus to action,” he wrote. In that sense, the legacy of the past implied a “task” for the future, a “will to become;” and folk education, consequently, was not to be understood as a finished product but as a process, also in the days to come.⁴⁹

Since Romantic times, the German peasantry had always been considered as a class in which traditional folklore had been preserved much longer and more accurately than in the cities. Ever since the Brothers Grimm had begun to collect folktales from the German peasants, folklorists, and philologists had followed their example in collecting from the rural population the heritage of the past. Since those days, the image of the peasant, too, had risen in popular esteem, partially due to the nationalistic movement that had brought with it a greater respect for the common man and the vernacular. On the other hand, the beginning of the twentieth century had also introduced folklore studies pertaining to the cities—a trend which the Nazis largely ignored. To the Nazis, the peasant was not merely a member of a given class and a “preserver” of folk tradition, but a symbol of the Nordic Germanic ancestor representing the “blood-and-soil” idea of racial strength as much as the spiritual determination of a Nordic warrior. Consequently, they did not portray the peasant in idyllic and peaceful terms but more as the “heroic” warrior fighting for the preservation of his family and heritage.⁵⁰

In 1935, Professor Hildebert Boehm was called to a chair in “Folk Theory” in Berlin, the first of its kind in Europe. It was meant to explore not only folklore as a political tool at home, in terms of its potential contributions to the Nazi ideology, but mainly folklore abroad. Folklore, race theory, and geopolitics combined were to serve the Nazis in strengthening Germandom abroad, both in the newly won “living space” areas in Eastern Europe and in the borderlands “endangered” by foreign cultures. Boehm called the folklore and peasant policy of the Third Reich not merely a temporary solution but a permanent policy aiming at the fight for Germandom and its preservation.⁵¹ It is this goal that Hitler had in mind, too, when he said in 1933: “The question concerning the preservation of our ethnic identity can be answered only if we have found a solution pertaining to the preservation of our peasantry.”⁵²

At the beginning of the thirties, some practical considerations may have played a role in promoting the peasant cult, especially the peasant migrations to the cities. The rural population had declined from about 60% of the total population to 30%, and Hitler introduced various land reforms, the hereditary farm laws, and the new post of the Reich Peasant Leader, to which he appointed Walter Darré. Darré himself was thinking in biological terms when considering the peasant to be the perpetuator of the “Nordic race.”⁵³ Statistics of 1937 indicated, however, that none of the practical measures taken had caused a substantial change in the percentage of the rural population. Still, the Nazi ideologists continued to promote the folklore and peasant policy as an “on-going” process in the manner as Krieck had advocated it, to build the “spiritual attitude” needed to consolidate the folk community of the Third Reich. Especially in children’s literature and folklore publications of the Nazi period, the “Volkish” direction of the Nazis’ cultural policy turned out to be a stable factor throughout the twelve-year existence of the Nazi Regime.

Plate 8

“Mother and Child”: Symbols of the Healthy Peasant Life

This “Volkish” ideology of National Socialism shaped the cultural policy of the Third Reich which essentially determined the direction of the Nazis’ censorship and their promotion of children’s literature and folklore. Since the Nazis considered children’s literature and folklore important aspects of German “folk education,” they selected, wrote, and re-interpreted them according to its guidelines.

The strong emotional and idealistic appeal of the Nazi ideology contributed to the relatively smooth transition of cultural trends from the Weimar Republic to the Nazi Regime. Whereas the Nazis used power and terror to reinforce their one-party system, they employed a “positive” cultural policy in order to establish long-range goals and to stabilize their system of controls. Totalitarian governments are seldom content with mere subjugation of the population but rather aim at a voluntary subordination of their subjects and a worship of the leader.⁵⁴ The Nazi ideology was intended to form a faithful and religiously devoted followership that had internalized not only the values of the Nordic Germanic past but also the values of National Socialism. Thus, the cultural policy of the Third Reich was not a temporary measure but one that was intended as a continuous process, just as Krieck had defined folk education. It was meant to last as long as the Nazi Regime itself. Due to the Nazis’ clever manipulation of values pertaining to Romantic and Volkish thought of pre-Nazi times, the cultural policy took on an “evolutionary” rather than a revolutionary character, while promising a remedy to German cultural despair. Some writers came to the conclusion after the war that the mythos of Nazism was such a pervasive force, that, without its aid, the Nazi Regime could certainly never have established its reign as it did.⁵⁵

If a number of scholars and educators, and a substantial portion of the German public became extremely gullible to the Nazi ideology, Hitler’s “hypnotic power” undoubtedly had less to do with it than the Nazis’abuses of the German nostalgia for a national unity and a genuine folk community, and of the Romantic yearning for political order promising respect for the common man and social dignity for all. Only to the more discriminating minds it was evident from the very start that the Nazis’ concepts of folk, community and personality actually stood in direct opposition to the Western humanitarian and democratic traditions; that unity for the Nazis meant uniformity, and that freedom implied slavery within a totalitarian system of controls.

Children’s literature, possibly more than any other aspect of German culture during the Nazi period, was strongly affected by the Nazis’ “positive” Volkish approach, for the ideologists knew well that especially young people are more susceptible to an idealistic appeal than to hate propaganda. As children’s literature and folklore were the very media through which the Nazis hoped to shape the “attitudes” of the youngest members of the German folk community toward the Third Reich, these subjects offer a unique testing ground for their methods of indoctrination and their subsequent perversion of traditional humanitarian values.

Plate 9

The Führer Cult

NOTES

1. “Wider den undeutschen Geist” Deutsche Kultur-Wacht 9 (1933), 5.

2. “Bücherautodafé” Frankfurter Zeitung (May 7, 1933).

3. “Die Rufer” Neuköllner Tageblatt (May 12, 1933). See also: Joseph Wulf, ed., Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Gütersloh, Sigbert Mohn Verlag, 1963), pp. 42–45.

4. Josef Goebbels, “Undeutsches Schrifttum” Deutsche Kultur-Wacht 5 (1933), 13.

5. “Wider den undeutschen Geist” General-Anzeiger für Bonner Umgebung (May 11, 1933). See also Walter A. Behrendsohn, Die humanistische Front. Eine Einführung in die deutsche Emigranten-Literatur, Vol. I (1933–1935) (Zürich, Europa Verlag, 1946), p. 19.

6. Behrendsohn, pp. 20–21.

7. Axel Eggebrecht, “Bücherverbrennung war der Anfang” Die Zeit (May 20, 1977), 9–10. The article is based on interviews.

8. Ibid.

9. Thomas Mann went into exile. Dietrich Strothmann, Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik. Ein Beitraq zur Publizistik im Dritten Reich (Bonn, Bouvier, 1965), pp. 27–33, and “An Exchange of Letters by Thomas Mann” Friends of Europe Publications No. 52 (London, Friends of Europe, 1937), with a foreword by J.B. Priestley.

10. Ricarda Huch’s letter was signed on April 9, 1933. Cited in Wulf, p. 27.

11. Harry Graf Kessler, Aus den Tagebüchern 1918–1937 (Munich, Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, G.m.b.H., 1965), p. 355.

12. Roger Manvill, SS Gestapo: Rule by Terror (New York, Ballantine, 1970), p. 355.

13. Walter Adolph, Hirtenamt und Hitler-Diktatur 2nd ed. (Berlin, Morus Verlag, 1965), p. 39.

14. Kessler, pp. 252–253 and p. 361.

15. Edward Y. Hartshorne, The German Universities (Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1949). Cited in Karl Dietrich Bracher, Wolfgang Sauer and Gerhard Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung. Studien zur Errichtung des totalitären Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland (Cologne, Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1962), p. 321.

16. Behrendsohn, pp. 17–24.

17. William Sheridan Allan, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experiences of a Small German Town 1930–1935 (Chicago, Quadrangle, 1968), p. 224. Allan reports that in the small town of Thalburg about one fourth of all library books was destroyed.

18. See the Chapter XIV, footnote 2.

19. Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York, Scribners’s 1960), p. 53. Also: Christa Kamenetsky, “Political Distortion of Philosophical Concepts: A Case History—Nazism and the Romantic Movement” Metaphilosophy 3, 3 (July, 1972), pp. 198–218.

20. Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (Munich, Piper Verlag, 1965), pp. 343–345.

21. Cited by Walter Hofer, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente 1933–1945 (Frankfurt, Fischer Bücherei, 1951), p. 120.

22. Ibid., p. 121.

23. “Aus der Marburger Rede von Papens” (June 17, 1934), Ibid., pp. 66–67.

24. Hans Schemm, cited by Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund, (National Socialist Teachers Association) eds., Jahrbuch 1935 (Munich, Fichte Verlag, 1935), p. 263. See also p. 286.

25. Aley reports that immediately following the service in the Magdeburg Cathedral, the Nazi flags were sanctioned in front of the Church. See Peter Aley, Jugendliteratur im Dritten Reich. Dokumente und Kommentare (Hamburg, Verlag für Buchmarktforschung, 1969), pp. 13–19. The documents cited also include letters by Fronemann and Rüttgers, as well as Rüttgers’ article on the Magdeburg Conference in the Rheinische Lehrerzeitung.

26. Hans Steinacher, “Vom deutschen Volkstum, von der deutschen Volksgenossenschaft und vom volksgebundenen Staat” in Paul Gauss, ed., Das Buch vom deutschen Volkstum: Wesen, Lebensraum, Schicksal (Leipzig, Klinckhardt, 1935), pp. 414–417. Heinz Kindermann went so far as to consider Herder’s concept of the folk to be a concept characterized by “a biological attitude toward race.” See Heinz Kindermann, Die Sturm- und Drangbewegung im Kampf um die deutsche Lebensform (Special Issue of the journal Von deutscher Art in Sprache und Dichtung, 1941/42), p. 33.

27. Ibid.

28. Friedrich Meinecke, The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections (Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 215.

29. Alfred Rosenberg, Das politische Tagebuch, 1934–35 und 1939–40. ed. by Hans Günther Seraphim (Nördlingen, Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1964), p. 243.

30. Ibid., p. 24. Rosenberg also referred to the Weltanschauung as “an attitude toward the fate awaiting us outside” while hinting at the “fighting spirit” of the Germanic North.

31. Reinhard Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner. Zum Machtkampf im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1970), pp. 27–39. The imposing title which Hitler bestowed upon Rosenberg was “Beauftragter des Führers für die Überwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Führung der N.S.D.A.P.” (Deputy of the Führer for the Control of the Total Spiritual and Ideological Leadership of the National Socialist Party).

32. Franz Theodor Hart, Alfred Rosenberg, der Mann und sein Werk (Munich, Lehmanns Verlag, 1939), pp. 94–100.

33. Bollmus, p. 340. For details of Rosenberg’s plan see “Der Plan für ein Reichsinstitut für deutsche Vorgeschichte bis zur Entscheidung,” Ibid., pp. 162–173. Rosenberg was also in charge of the office for Volkskunde und Feiergestaltung (Folklore and Festivals). His pseudo-scientific approach to folklore and history were popular with the Party, but brought him criticisms, too, mainly from some scholars. See: “Rezensionen über Rosenbergs Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts” in Josef Ackermann, Himmler als Ideologe; Nach Tagebüchern, stenographischen Notizen, Briefen und Reden. (Göttingen, Musterschmidt, 1970), pp. 339–360 and pp. 82–89. Like Rosenberg, Himmler also drew up plans in connection with German cultural politics, particularly on behalf of “The Exploration of the Germanic Heritage,” in connection with which he hoped to issue fifty volumes of German folklore and history dedicated to the Germanic North. Together with Wirth, he founded the society Deutsches Ahnenerbe (The German Forefathers’ Heritage), whose journal, by the same name, was published by Rosenberg’s office. See Ackermann, pp. 42–77. All of these activities point to the Nordic Germanic tendencies of the Nazi ideology.

34. Hermann Bausinger, “Volksideologie und Volksforschung” in Andreas Flitner, ed., Deutsches Geistesleben und Nationalsozialismus (Tübingen, Rainer Wunderlich Verlag, 1965), pp. 140–141. Also: Christa Kamenetsky, “Folklore as a Political Tool in Nazi Germany” Journal of American Folklore 35, 337 (July/Sept., 1972), 221–235.

35. Martin Broszat, Der Nationalsozialismus: Weltanschauung, Programm und Wirklichkeit (Schriftenreihe der Niedersächsischen Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung. Zeitgeschichte Heft Nr. 8) (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1960). See also: Ernst Aurich, Drei Stücke über nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1932), p. 14, and Jürgen Lützhoff, Der nordische Gedanke in Deutschland (Stuttgart, Ernst Klett Verlag, 1971). Lützhoff pointed out that the Nazis used the terms nordeuropäisch and nordisch (Northern European and Nordic) as racial concepts, while they employed the term nordländisch (northlandic) in reference to geographical locations. Broszat in particular emphasized that the Nazis used ambiguous language in the attempt to hide their true intentions behind such a “conglomerate” term as “Volkish,” for example.

36. Alfred Rosenberg, “Nordische Wiedergeburt,” in Dr. Walther Zimmermann, ed., Nordische Wiedergeburt (Berlin, Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1935), pp. 9–14. See also Ernst Bergmann, “Von der Hoheit des nordischen Menschen” Germanien 3 (March, 1933), 55–66 and F.K. Günther, “Der nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen” in Zimmermann, ed. For further information on the concept of the “New Humanism” during the Nazi period consult Gerhard Salomon, Humanismuswende: Humanistische Bildung im Nationalsozialistischen Staat (Leipzig, Teubner, 1933) and Ernst Bergmann, Deutschland, das Bildungsland der Menschheit (Breslau, Hirt Verlag, 1933).

37. Kohn, p. 50. See also; Oscar Walzel, German Romanticism (New York, Putnam’s Sons, 1967), pp. 21–33. The Romantic quest for “totality” had philosophical implications in regard to the search for unity of the arts and the sciences, of emotion and reason. To the Nazis, “totality” implied “total control” over all aspects of cultural and political life, and had little or nothing to do with the “Faustian” search for meaning in life.

38. Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptdienstleiter, (Director of the Racial-Political Office of the Party), “Rassenpolitische Aufgaben der Gegenwart” Grundschullagen für die Reichsthemen der N.S.D.A.P. für das Jahr 1941/42., ed. by: Der Beauftragte des Führers für die gesamte geistige und weltanschauliche Schulung und Erziehung der N.S.D.A.P. (Rosenberg) (Berlin, Verlag der N.S.D.A.P., 1942) pp. 81–83.

39. Dr. O. Dietrich, Reichspressechef, (Director of the Reich Press Office), “Revolution des Denkens” Freude und Arbeit VI (June, 1936), 16.

40. Hellmuth Langenbucher, Die deutsche Gegenwartsdichtung. Eine Einführung in das volkhafte Schrifttum unserer Zeit (Berlin, Junker, und Dünnhaupt, 1940), pp. 10–11.

41. Oscar Lukas, “Das Wesentliche unseres Volkstums” Das deutsche Mädel (Leipzig, Adam Kraft Verlag, 1936), pp. 69–71.

42. “Der Türmer” in Reichsjugendführung, (Reich Youth Leadership Organization) ed., Sommerlager und Heimatabendmaterial für die Schulungs- und Kulturarbeit der H. J. (Schulungsplan für Juni, Juli und August) (Berlin, Zentralverlag der N.S.D.A.P., 1941), pp. 33–36. Among other things, we read here: “You are nothing, but your folk is everything, and this shall be the guiding principle of your life.” See p. 20.

43. Ernst Krieck, “Reform der Lehrerbildung im Dritten Reich” in N.S. Lehrerbund, eds., Jahrbuch 1935, pp. 309–315. For a general evaluation of Krieck’s theory of education consult Rolf Eilers, Die nationalsozialistische Schulpolitik; Eine Studie zur Funktion der Erziehung im nationalsozialistischen Staat (Cologne, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963), pp. 5–35. See also Alfred Beck, Erziehung im Grossdeutschen Reich (Dortmund, W. Crowell Verlag, 1936), p. 123.

44. Ernst Krieck, “Die Objektivität der Wissenschaft als Problem” in Schriften des Reichsinstituts für Geschichte des neuen Deutschland (Heidelberger Reden von Reichsminister Rust und Professor Ernst Krieck) (Hamburg, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1936), pp. 27–30. Krieck emphasized here that the concept of “humanity” was much too broad and too abstract to make sense. Instead, Germans should look for “humanity” among their own members of the folk community, for the folk community was the only reality that truly existed. For the Nordic Germanic emphasis consult also: Ernst Krieck, Dichtung und Erziehung (Leipzig, Artamanen Verlag, 1933).

45. Ibid. p. 17.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Otto Schmidt, Volkstumsarbeit als politische Aufgabe (Berlin, Industrieverlag, 1937), p. 94.

49. Hans Schemm, “Der Totalitätsbegriff in der Erziehung des politischen Menschen mit dem Ziel Volk und Gott” N. S. Lehrerbund, (National Socialist Teachers Association), eds. Jahrbuch, 1935, pp. 286–288, and Krieck, “Reform . . .” p. 309.

50. Bausinger, See p. 125.

51. Max Hildebert Boehm, Volkskunde (Berlin, Weidmannsche Verlagsanstalt, 1936). p. 8. See also: Max Hildebert Boehm, Volkstheorie und Volkstumspolitik der Gegenwart (Berlin, Junker und Dünnahupt, 1935) and Wilhelm Stapel, “Entschiedene Kulturpolitik” Deutsches Volkstum (April, 1933), 313–319.

52. Adolf Hitler, cited in “Das Dorf wächst ins Reich” in Volk im Werden 4 (April, 1933), 11–12. On another occasion, Hitler said: “The Third Reich will be a peasant Reich or it won’t be at all!” Cited in Dr. Karl Sachse, “Das Bauerntum in der deutschen Geschichte” in K.A. Walter, ed., Neues Volk auf alter Erde: Ein Bauernlesebuch (Berlin, Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1935), pp. 115–116.

53. Walter Darré, Das Bauerntum als Lebensquelle der nordischen Rasse (Berlin, Verlag der N.S.D.A.P., Franz Eher, Nachf., 1940/41). First published in 1934. Also: Blut und Boden (Berlin, Industrieverlag, Spaethe and Linde, 1936).

54. David Schönbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (New York, Doubleday, 1966), pp. 159–186.

55. Bracher, Sauer, and Schulz, Introduction. This is an excellent definition of totalitarianism and the Nazis’ idealistic appeal for the “folk community.” For a distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism consult also: Michael Levin, “How to Tell Bad from Worse” Newsweek (July 20, 1981), p. 7.