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3

The Nazis’ Theory of Volkish Literature

Like all aspects of German culture during the Nazi period, literature was transformed into an instrument of Volkish propaganda. Goebbels called it an expression of the “cultural will of the people,”¹ and the critic Heinz Kindermann, who originally introduced the concept of volkhafte Dichtung (Volkish literature) defined it in terms of its relationship to the mythos of the German blood, race, spirit, ancestors, landscape, and destiny.² Norbert Langer, whose definition of the concept was equally vague and ambiguous, referred to its special mission of preserving the German tradition at home and abroad, “wherever there are Germans.”³ In his view, Volkish literature was shared by all who were of German blood and who spoke the German language. Such definitions characterized the political and ideological role of literature in the Third Reich that had little to do with the self expression of individual authors.

The Nazi slogan: “Das Buch—Unsere Waffe” (The Book—Our Weapon) further indicated that literature played a vital role in the fight for German national unity under the rulership of the Nazi Regime. Books were to be written and to be used to “guide” all generations of readers in the ideology of National Socialism. Books were not only the most significant media of instruction but also of indoctrination. By means of the “right” type of literature the Nazis hoped to promote especially in young people the “right” attitude toward Party and State. During a meeting of the Reich Culture Chamber in November, 1934, State Secretary Funk defined art and literature as indispensable tools within the politics of the State, expressing his hope that they would serve to influence the German people by filling them with the spirit of the National Socialist idea.⁴

The Nazis saw children’s literature as an integral part of Volkish literature, because they believed that it had to live up to the same “task” as all literature. Through it they hoped to achieve a control over their children’s attitude toward the German folk community and the goals of National Socialism. Basically, they distinguished between three different categories of Volkish literature. The first one was folklore proper, from which they singled out all those German and Nordic Germanic traditions that appeared to be well suited for the purpose of folk education, such as German folktales, Norse mythology, and the Nordic sagas, as well as German and Danish ballads and legends. The second category consisted of older German literature, including short stories, regional novels, historical novels, and certain excerpts from books that lent themselves well to a “Volkish” interpretation in the National Socialist sense. The third category was the new literature that was relatively slow in coming and that corresponded to the Nazis’ requirements of “Volkish literature” without being dependent on the “right” interpretation. To be sure that the first two categories, which made up the bulk of children’s literature during the first half of the Nazi Regime, would be interpreted in the proper manner, the Party and State censorship authorities would issue detailed “guidelines” for teachers, librarians and youth leaders. In addition, all editors of folklore journals and literature journals were placed under pressure to follow the National Socialist ideology in the interpretation and criticism of every article or book review published. Those who did not follow this demand were denied paper for printing or were ordered to cease publishing altogether.⁵

What we today plainly call “censorship,” the Nazis expressed as “cultural guidance.” In this activity they distinguished between two directions, one of which would move toward destroying all those elements in literature that did not fit their ideology, and the other one which would help them in their efforts to build the folk state of the future. The first one may be associated with the book purges, but it should be associated also with the willful distortion of folklore and portions of the older literature that were re-interpreted in a “National Socialist” manner. The Nazis never admitted that they were in any way doing something to art and literature that overstepped their boundaries. Hans Friedrich Blunck, President of the Reich Literature Chamber, used the gentle simile of a gardener’s job to explain the task that Goebbels had assigned to him. He said that the State authorities would have to “pull out all of the weeds” from the “healthy bed of flowers,” very much like a gardener who truly cared about his plants. If left untended, the weeds would choke the young plants and stifle their growth and development. “Thus,” he concluded, “the State has the right to choose and select from among the literary creations and the authors according to its own will and desire. It has the right to do so—and it has always made use of this right—in order to counteract those movements that have a tendency to lead to the disintegration of German culture.”⁶

As the removal of “un-Volkish” literature was an on-going process during the Nazi period and not confined to its early stages, the criteria used in this process are just as important as those connected with the promotion of “desirable” Volkish literature. At first, teachers and librarians followed in their selection procedures the general guidelines of the Nazi ideology and some more specific principles set forth in Goebbels’ “black lists”—a periodic index of “un-Volkish” works that also included children’s books. Later, Reich Education Minister Rust urged all teachers and librarians again to screen the contents of their library holdings in view of the National Socialist “Volkish” requirements and to remove all of the remaining items that unnecessarily “cluttered” the bookshelves.⁷ During the national conference in 1937, the National Socialist Teachers Association finally agreed to set up definite guidelines for the removal of “un-Volkish” literature and to implement these without delay. The ten points listed covered most aspects of the Nazis’ censorship theory.⁸ Significantly, the first one referred to the need of removing books that supposedly contradicted the “Nordic Germanic attitude.” According to the attached explanation, this applied to works portraying unheroic characters, pacifistic themes, or certain “weaknesses” in German history. Implied in this statement was a simultaneous promotion of books dwelling on heroic themes and a “positive” world view. The second point concerned unwanted literature as far as the “wrong attitude toward Jews” and the racial question were concerned. It referred quite explicitly to books which portrayed Jews as “noble protagonists” but Germans as “treacherous villains.” Such themes were not to be tolerated, it said, nor others that presented a cooperation among different races or interracial marriages in a favorable light. The next following point, too, spoke against books depicting ideals of the brotherhood of man across racial lines. Specifically, it addressed the need of abolishing books that accepted the “imperialism of the Pope” while placing the value of the individual “monastic” life over the value of a life dedicated to the service of the German folk community.

The most drastic National Socialist censorship principles were those which were directed against works written by Jews or by persons who, for one reason or another, had expressed a dissenting view in regard to the Nazi Regime. Among the seventy Jewish writers whose works were to be withheld from children and youth were the names of Heinrich Heine, Else Ury, Jakob Wassermann, Franz Werfel, Ludwig Fulda, Alfred Döblin, Emil Ludwig, Arthur Schnitzler, Georg Simmel, and Stefan Zweig. Among the forty “dissidents” were those of Erich Kästner, Jack London, and Lisa Tetzner. In both cases, the Association’s judgment was unrelated to literary criteria altogether, as it focused primarily on biological-racial determinism on the one hand and on the authors’ political and ideological attitudes on the other. It is evident that from the very beginning that such an application of Volkish book selection criteria ruled out altogether an evaluation of certain works of literature, simply, because some authors were singled out as “aliens” and “enemies” of the German folk community.

Some of the other criteria which the Association listed, at first sight appeared to be noncontroversial or even acceptable. Thus, some librarians initially may have sympathized with the request of removing books from the library shelves for so-called “reasons of national self-preservation and national security.” Yet, who was to define what was dangerous to the nation’s security? Given the tight security measures within the totalitarian state, as well as the Party’s dogmatic opposition to free speech and the individual’s right to an appeal, it turned out that such a vague guideline lent itself to arbitrary censorship actions. The same was true for the apparently universal selection criteria referring to the removal of books that were “out-dated” in their contents and “worn and unsightly” in their physical appearance, for even today librarians everywhere use common sense judgement in “weeding out” books that they consider to belong under these categories. Within the context of the Nazis’ Volkish censorship, however, the Party leadership reserved the right for itself to determine what books were to be earmarked as “out-dated,” and these criteria, too, easily gave the authorities an excuse to remove unwanted books from the library shelves. Many valuable works of German and world literature were now labelled this way, merely because they no longer served a particular purpose within the Nazis’ folk education program.⁹

Some of the guidelines referred to the removal of books representing “sentimental clichés and moralistic tales.” Such criteria appeared to resemble those used by Wolgast and the members of the former Children’s Literature Association around 1900,¹⁰ and for this reason were received sympathetically by educators. The difference was, however, that unlike the former critics, the Nazis really cared very little about aesthetic principles and quality control in children’s literature, but mainly opposed books of this type because they had nothing to offer in terms of promoting the new didacticism of the National Socialist ideology. From their point of view, neither old fashioned moralistic tales nor sentimental and religious tales had a bearing upon promoting the heroic ethics needed for the “young team” of the future.

The new concept of Volkish literature as a “positive” instrument in promoting German folk education was as complex and ambiguous as the National Socialist ideology from which it derived its direction. Since the new concept of volkhafte Literatur (Volkish literature) sounded very much like volkstümliche Literatur (regional literature and folk literature, including folklore), and since, in addition, the Nazis often used them interchangeably, without necessarily referring to the more politically flavored concept of völkische Literatur, it came to be associated in many circles with the revival of idyllic literature dating back to the turn of the century.¹¹ Such an ambiguity not only led to confusions regarding the true meaning of the concept, but initially also contributed, at least partially, to the wholehearted support which some educators and former members of pre-Nazi Volkish groups gave to the National Socialist cultural policy. In many respects, the Nazis’ emphasis on volkhafte Literatur for young children reminded them of what Severin Rüttgers and various Volkish groups in the Weimar Republic had tried to accomplish by strengthening the role of native folklore and German folk literature in the reading curriculum. It took them some time before they realized that the Nazis’ ideological goals were aimed far beyond a mere “revival” of former Volkish trends.

Plate 10

“The Ancestor”

The question then arises as to what exactly children’s books were expected to accomplish within the new context of German folk education. During the early stages of the Nazi Regime, it was Hans Maurer, editor of one of the first bibliographical guides to Volkish literature for children and youth, who also gave one of the first definitions of its tasks. On behalf of the Hitler Youth Organization and the Reich Youth Library in Berlin, he defined the new goals of Volkish literature as follows:

We Expect of Good Books That They Will:

1. Arouse among children an enthusiasm for the heroes of sagas, legends and history, for the soldiers of the great wars, the Führer and the New Germany, so as to strengthen their love of the fatherland and give them new ideals to live by.

2. Show the beauty of the German landscape.

3. Focus on the fate of children of German ethnic groups living abroad and emphasize their yearning for the Reich.

4. Deal with the love of nature and promote nature crafts.

5. Relate old German myths, folktales and legends, in a language reflecting the original folk tradition as closely as possible.

6. Give practical advice and help to the Hitler Youth, both in relation to recreational programs and camp activities.¹²

Maurer’s concern with the themes of nature and the German landscape, with German and Nordic Germanic folklore, and patriotic elements shows a clear correspondence with the themes emphasized in pre-Nazi times by the German Youth movement and in children’s literature by Severin Rüttgers. Even the emphasis on the Führer, the “New Reich,” Germandom abroad, and the Hitler Youth in part could still have been understood as a continuation of Volkish-political thought that prevailed during the twenties. In particular Maurer’s attempt to revive the old folk traditions presented a skillful link between older popular trends and new directions in children’s literature. Whereas the book selections in Maurer’s Guides readily betrayed the exclusive concern with German themes, past and present, and a strong racial bias, the criteria as listed did not yet sufficiently alert those who had begun to look suspiciously upon the Nazis’ literary policies.

When a few years later the National Socialist Teachers Association stated the criteria and requirements of Volkish literature as pertaining to children and youth, the guidelines clearly revealed not only a racial bias but also the crucial role to be played by children’s literature in National Socialist folk education. It was now evident that the values derived from a new interpretation of the Nordic Germanic past were to be utilized for the purpose of an ideological indoctrination. Whereas Maurer had referred to folktales, myths, and sagas only in relation to traditional language patterns, the National Socialist Teachers Association emphasized the Nordic hero’s “attitude toward fate” and his “inner victory in spite of a possible defeat,” by associating both with the developing war ethics of the German folk community of the present time. All children’s books would have to do justice to the German people, they wrote, namely by promoting a spirit of service and sacrifice for the German folk community, as well as by expressing confidence in the nation’s victory. They should also convey to the young reader the need to accept one’s fate with an attitude of confidence, an “inner victory,” regardless of the outcome of a given battle. In this spirit writers should convincingly portray tragic and heroic characters, so as to appeal to young people. They concluded that such an attitude could be portrayed only by writers of German blood “and of racially related origin.”¹³

GREAT HEROES OF GERMAN HISTORY

(From a Hitler Youth Yearbook)

Plate 11

King Henry “believed in the eastward expansion of the German Reich . . .”

Plate 12

Ulrich von Hutten “fought for the people’s rights.”

The major emphasis in this definition of the role of children’s literature lies in its needed support of the German “fighting spirit.” In that sense, children’s books, like all literature, represented an ideological “weapon” for the Nazis to establish the principle that the present was a direct continuation of the past, and that National Socialism demanded the same type of heroism as the Nordic Germanic “ancestors” had required. In the spirit of Norse mythology and the sagas, this implied a defiant attitude toward fate and a spirit of “action” rather than of resignation. Throughout the Nazi period, the Nordic heroes were put up as ideal models for children and youth. The newer writers, too, were expected to extoll their virtues through fiction. The critic Hellmuth Langenbucher demanded that writers should present their characters mainly in relation to the past, especially in regard to the nation’s “storm and stress,” so as to illustrate their heroic attitude toward the fate of the German people throughout history. A literary portrayal of such an heroic struggle, regardless of when it had occurred, would be most relevant to the present time. “Today it is expected of poetry, literature, drama, and film,” he concluded, “that they show the heroic type of man . . .”¹⁴

The term “heroic literature” was but another word that the Nazis used for Volkish literature. Patterned upon the Nordic hero’s attitude toward fate, it was meant to project the “New Man’s” attitude toward the Third Reich. The Nazis also referred to the new literature as a literature characterized by Wirklichkeitsnähe (proximity to real life) while they claimed that it represented “National Socialist Realism.”¹⁵ At the same time, however, they considered it also as a “symbolic literature.” Rosenberg defined the role of art and literature in terms of their capacity to exceed the immediacy of experience while employing symbols to express “the mythos of life.”¹⁶ Hitler, too, called attention to the “symbolic” function of art and literature in terms of their obligation to maintain the morale of the nation state and to develop “positive” ideals:

They should arouse our national self-consciousness and stimulate the individual to greater achievements. In order to fulfill this task, they will have to become prophetic of all that is dignified and beautiful in life and of all that is natural and healthy. If indeed they do live up to this task, then no sacrifice is too great to promote their cause. If, however, they fall short of it, then we should not waste a penny on them, for if art and literature are not healthy and do not assure us of progress and longevity, they are nothing but symbols of degeneration and decay . . .¹⁷

The “symbols” of Volkish literature, as the Nazis understood them, were not the personal inventions of individual authors but the “overpersonal” creations of Volkish ideology employed in the service of the folk state. As such, they were linked with propaganda, although their apparent relationship to Norse mythology and religion, to Romantic Volkish and irrational thought endowed them with the glamour of a “mythos” of “deeper significance.” These “symbols” were expected to be “positive” as much as advertisement and propaganda are expected to be “positive” if it is their aim to sell a given product. The Nazis did not really wish to sell a finished product but hoped to stimulate by “symbolic literature” the continuous process of folk education that would turn German children and youth into a homogeneous community of “true believers.” Writers who dwelt upon the theme of human suffering, or on deplorable social conditions and suppressive circumstances were condemned as “degenerates.” Thus, Volkish literature not only ignored the real present conditions of the people but also the “reality” of history and mythology while focusing exclusively on the “healthy” and successful image of German life in the past and in the present, for it was its ultimate goal to raise the “New Man” of the future. “There are symbols everywhere,” said Rosenberg, “even in the so-called Nordic race.”¹⁸ Such a definition of symbols had very little to do with what modern critics call “symbolic expression” of art, or “symbolic action.”¹⁹ To Rosenberg and other Nazi ideologists symbols were predetermined images representing a conscious combination of National Socialist ideas and mythical images of the Nordic Germanic past. They shared with modern symbols a certain ambiguity, especially in regard to Volkish concepts of various kinds, yet even this ambiguity was a part of the Nazis’ rational scheming to simulate prevailing Volkish trends in pre-Nazi days. The symbols of Nazism were essentially ready-made formulae meant solely to enhance the mythos of the Third Reich. What they lacked was an unrehearsed ambiguity rich enough to serve creative writers and artists as a basis for their own creative thoughts. As they carried a prescribed ideological message, they represented severe limitations to writers and artists.

Plate 13

“Storytelling” (From Hobrecker’s Anthology): The Revival of German and Germanic Folk Traditions

In children’s literature, as much as in all other spheres of German culture during the Third Reich, the new “symbolism” imposed on writers a conglomerate of clichés related to concepts of blood, soil, mythos, race, and the never-ending fight of the German nation. When writers attempted to remodel the reality of historical characters and events in historical fiction and biography, for example, the threadbare fabric of their models and the didactic intent of their symbols became all too evident and certainly did not convince. In one story, for example, the author portrayed William the Conqueror as the ancestor of Adolf Hitler, while glorifying both as determined fighters of the Nordic race.²⁰ Within the Nazis’ context of symbolic thinking such a distortion of history was necessary and applaudable and the Party reserved for itself the right to reinterpret history and folklore as it saw fit, while ordering writers to follow the blueprints faithfully.²¹

Plate 14

The Sentimental “Volkish Appeal”: “We Love Our Führer, Our Home, and Our Fatherland!”

The official Nazi definition of Volkish literature, particularly as it was promoted by Goebbels and the Reich Youth Leadership Organization, did not make a basic distinction between children’s literature and literature intended for adult readers. The National Socialist Teachers Association was a little more moderate in this connection, but even they tended to ignore age group criteria on various occasions. Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach explained this attitude in 1934 by referring to the changed emphasis of the literature available to youth: “Every true work of art addresses the whole nation, and as such, it also addresses youth.”²² Maurer supported this view by arguing that the most important task of Volkish literature was not to please or entertain children, but to promote the spirit of Germandom. He expressed his confidence in the fact that, at the present time, German children were mature enough to grasp the significance of this objective. “What they really want is literature that tells them more about the Führer, the nation, and the German people.”²³ Also Lichtenberger, who in pre-Nazi days had so vigorously defended the need of preserving in children’s books the “childlike appeal,” now reasoned that even Theodor Storm in the nineteenth century had said: “If you wish to write for youth, don’t write for youth!”²⁴ Fritz Helke, Director of the Reich Youth Literature Division in Berlin, was a little more conscious of a certain methodological breach with the past, and thus felt obliged to add the following explanation:

It is very evident that this list (of children’s literature) does contain a great amount of literature for adults. Although to some persons this may appear a strange and unfamiliar practice, it does reflect one of the most important deviations in our attitude toward children’s books in comparison with that which has prevailed in the past. Further, it does distinguish our policy from the policy pursued by former organizations.²⁵

The former organizations were the Children’s Literature Association and the Art Education movement of pre-Nazi days. Helke did not bother to explain why the attitude toward children’s books had changed, nor what exactly the differences were, but merely announced the new policy as a dogma.

The National Socialist Teachers Association at least tried to explain to its members why Volkish literature for children now included so many works that originally had been written for adults. Their first reason was that the new writers simply had not come up with enough good books yet to satisfy the ideological demands and artistic standards of the authorities, and the second reason was that the selected works for older readers were so superb in expressing the new symbolism of the Third Reich, that educators simply could not do their job without them:

If we wish to raise heroes, then we will have to expose our children early enough to the concepts of war and heroism. Yet, if the works of the newer writers do fall short of invoking the symbols of the great warriors who have fallen in battle, and if they fail to provide our youth with heroic examples, then they have done their writing in vain. In the poetry of Heinrich Anacker, Eberhard Wolfgang Müller, and Gerhard Schumann our young people will recognize their better selves. Also, if we want to develop in our youth the inborn German character, then we cannot do without the works of Kolbenheyer, Wilhelm Schäfer, and Emil Strauss.²⁶

It is difficult to establish concisely what individual educators were really thinking about such a policy at the time, for they risked their personal safety by publishing a dissenting view; and if indeed they had dared to do so, nevertheless, the censors would probably not have permitted their articles to appear in print exactly as they had written them. The dissenting views that were published were usually confined to matters of pedagogical or methodological concerns but did not touch upon the vital issue of censorship itself. Thus, F. Jürgens, for example, complained in the Jugendschriften-Warte in 1934 that the leaders of the Hitler Youth Organization had displayed “sheer ignorance” in defining the concept of Volkish literature without an appropriate knowledge of psychology and childhood education.²⁷ Ludwig Göhring even made the point in 1938 that forty years of professional know-how could not simply be “wiped away” by those who were now in power, and that pedagogical and psychological considerations still played a role in evaluating children’s books.²⁸ Neither one of them, however, addressed the more serious issue of the intrusion of ideological values into children’s literature but seemed to take them for granted.

Some well known members of the former Children’s Literature Association were equally ambiguous when stating their views on the status of children’s literature after 1933. Franz Lichtenberger, for example, who at the beginning of the twentieth century had still defended children’s literature against the intrusion of political and social objectives when demanding, that children’s books first be evaluated for their portrayal of the “childlike” perspective, as well as for their literary and artistic qualities, now subordinated those criteria to ideological perspectives of Nazism. In 1940 he requested that children’s books be judged according to the following criteria:

1. The National Socialist point of view.

2. An artistic and literary point of view (and, in the case of nonfiction, a scientific point of view).

3. A pedagogical point of view.²⁹

In the article following this listing, he elaborated why the points mentioned would have to be considered in the order as stated. Such an “adjustment” to the Party’s demands indeed appeared like a sad surrender of all the principles of liberalism that had still characterized much of the activity of the former Children’s Literature Association he wrote, but by its very nature, the National Socialist point of view overruled all other considerations. Lichtenberger, however, even went on to condemn international and pacifistic trends in children’s literature of pre-Nazi times. The only theories of value to come from that period were those of Severin Rüttgers, he wrote, as they provided a solid basis for the present revival of Volkish and nationalistic values in children’s literature. He reminded teachers that, at the present time, children’s literature primarily served the “trinity of race, folk, and God,” which was the body, soul, and spirit of the German nation.

Another example of how prominent scholars of children’s literature gradually yielded to the Nazis’ pressure of Gleichschaltung was the case of Wilhelm Fronemann, a leading representative of the former Children’s Literature Association. While in 1933, shortly after the Nazis’ seizure of power, he had written a letter of protest to the Reich Minister of Education in Berlin, pledging for professional and supposedly more independent criteria in the evaluation of children’s books,³⁰ his values gradually evolved in the direction of the new establishment. In 1934, he complained in an article published in the Jugendschriften-Warte that the newer children’s literature publications still lacked the desired good quality, but somehow he seemed to have overlooked the more urgent issue pertaining to the political manipulation of children’s books.³¹ In 1939, he appraised Severin Rüttgers’ Volkish contributions to children’s literature, while simultaneously expressing his admiration for Karl von Spiess’ racial folktale interpretation, thus implying support for the pre-Nazi as well as the Nazi definition of Volkish literature.³² Even more conspicuous was his recommendation that publishers should pay more attention to the promotion of children’s books that dealt with geopolitics (Raumplanung), hereditary science, genealogy, and racial science, among others, as these served the present educational needs. “It is the highest goal of political education,” he added, “to develop in the individual the feeling that he is an integral part of the racial folk community, and that he lives his life accordingly . . .”³³

Plate 15

Hitler Youth Drummers: Belief in Fate and Confidence in the Future

The ambiguous definition of the term “Volkish literature” had its source in the ambivalent attitudes of those who used it. First, there were those educators who rather naively believed that the Nazis’ Volkish attitude indeed was nothing but an innocent concern with a German and Germanic folklore revival based on Romantic and patriotic sentiments. Secondly, there were those who since 1933 had openly embraced a radical change in attitude along racial and geopolitical lines. To these belonged the ideologists themselves and the members of the Hitler Youth Organization. Thirdly, there was a heterogeneous group of persons, among them many members of the National Socialist Teachers Association, who shifted from one point of view to another, while partially hiding behind Rüttgers’ and Krieck’s Volkish theories, yet neither clearly approving nor disapproving of the Nazi ideology. The ambivalent attitudes of these persons belonging to the third group especially helped the Nazis to assert their own policy of Volkish literature, as they accommodated the new “symbolic” interpretation, and, ultimately, their goal of ideological indoctrination.

On a broader scale, the political and ideological demands of the Party tended to prevail in regard to children’s literature. Reich Education Minister Rust made some minor concessions to age group criteria and reading levels through his curricular reforms and “Basic Lists” for the school libraries, yet the goals of German folk education remained unchanged. Also, regardless of the concessions involved, the formal definition of Volkish literature always gave first consideration to the National Socialist point of view, in the case of books intended for the youngest children.

NOTES

1. Rolf Geissler, Dekadenz und Heroismus. Zeitroman und völkish-nationalsozialistische Literaturkritik (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1964), p. 30. See also: Wilhelm Westecker, “Methode und Form der Buchbesprechung” Bücherkunde (March/April, 1937), 167–180.

2. Heinz Kindermann, Dichtung und Volkheit: Grundzüge einer neuen Literaturwissenschaft (Berlin, Volksverlag, 1937).

3. Norbert Langer, Die deutsche Dichtung seit dem Weltkrieg: von Paul Ernst bis Hans Baumann (Leipzig, Adam Kraft Verlag, 1941), p. 7.

4. Staatssekretär Funk, November, 1934. Cited by Walter A. Behrendsohn, Die humanistische Front: Eine Einführung in die deutsche Emigranten Literatur, Vol. I (1933–1939) (Zürich, Europa Verlag, 1946, p. 25.

5. To deprive publishing houses of paper supplies was just one of the less severe punishments by Party and State authorities in case of rule violations. Serious offenses usually resulted in more drastic measures. See Chapter 14 on “The System of Censorship.” Also: Hermann Bausinger, “Volksideologie und Volksforschung” in Andreas Flitner, ed., Deutsches Geistesleben und Nationalsozialismus (Tübingen, Wunderlich Verlag, 1965), pp. 140–149.

6. Hans Friedrich Blunck, “Deutsche Kulturpolitik” Das Innere Reich, Vol. 1 (Munich, Eher Verlag, 1940), 63–65.

7. “Rust-Verordnung” cited in Die Reichsverwaltung des N. S.L. B., (Reich Office of the National Socialist Teachers Association) eds., Die Schülerbücherei (Leipzig, Volksverlag, n.d.), p. 22.

8. Ibid., pp. 23–25.

9. For a general description of Goebbels’ attitude toward literature and literary criticism consult Westecker. Also: Bernhard Payr, Das Amt Schrifttumspflege Berlin (Berlin, Verlag der N.S.D.A.P., 1941). Two relevant articles about the new literary criticism in relation to children’s books are: Heinrich Scharrelmann, “Über die Beurteilung und Stoff von Jugendschriften” Jugendschriften-Warte 42/1 (January, 1936), 23–25 and Udo Dickel, “Positive Buchbesprechung” Jugendschriften-Warte 44, 9–10 (Sept./Oct/, 1939), 139.

10. Irene Dyrenfurth-Graebsch, Geschichte der deutschen Jugendbuchforschung (Hamburg, Stichrate, 1951), p. 197. Also, see the related discussion of this issue in Chapter 1.

11. Peter Aley, Jugendliteratur im Dritten Reich: Dokumente und Kommentare (Hamburg, Verlag für Buchmarktforschung, 1969), pp. 3–30. See especially his analysis of the Magdeburg Conference. For a general discussion of the impact of the Nazis’ “positive” folk culture and Volkish ideology consult Georg L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1964) and Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York, Scribner’s 1960) and Peter Viereck, Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind (New York, Capricorn, 1964), pp. 67–74.

12. Hans Maurer, Jugend und Buch im Neuen Reich (Leipzig, Lehmanns Verlag, 1934), pp. 32–33.

13. Reichsverwaltung des N. S.L. B., eds., Die Schülerbücherei, p. 60. See also: Marianne Günzel and Harriet Schneider, Buch und Erziehung. Jugendschrifttumskunde (Leipzig, Klinkhardt, 1943), pp. 157–158.

14. Helmuth Langenbucher, Die Deutsche Gegenwartsdichtung. Eine Einführung in das volkhafte Schrifttum unserer Zeit (Berlin, 1940), p. 37.

15. H. Boeschenstein, The German Novel (Toronto, Toronto University Press, 1949), p. 3. Boeschenstein said that the Nazis neglected universal human elements in favor of formalistic elements in their pursuit of a “realism” that was far removed from the reality of the conditions prevailing in the Third Reich. This notion can be confirmed by a stylistic analysis of children’s books.

16. Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts: 2nd ed. (Munich, Eher Verlag, 1931), p. 251.

17. Adolf Hitler, “Volk und Kunst” in Hirts Deutsches Lesebuch 8B (Breslau, Hirt Verlag, 1940) p. 119.

18. Alfred Rosenberg, “Symbol und Rasse” I Bid., p. 49.

19. See, for example, R. R. Blackmur Form and Value in Modern Poetry (New York, Random House, 1957), p. 367. Blackmur considers art and literature as living, searching, forever changing processes—a definition that is quite contrary to the Nazis’ didactic conception of “symbols.”

20. Marion Marshak, “German Fiction Today” The American Journal of Sociology (January, 1944), 356.

21. Wilhelm Rödiger, The Teaching of History: Its Purpose, Material and Method (London, Friends of Europe Publications #57, 1938), pp. 3–10.

22. Baldur von Schirach, cited by Maurer, p. 45. Grunberger commented that the Reich Youth Leadership Organization officially defined the child below the age of ten as “the non-uniformed creature who has never participated in a group meeting or a route march.” Richard Grunberger, The Twelve-Year Reich; A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 277.

23. Maurer, pp. 13–14.

24. Franz Lichtenberger, “Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Idee der Kindertümlichkeit” Jugendschriften-Warte 45, 9–10 (September/October, 1940), 75–80.

25. Fritz Helke, “H.J.-Arbeit am Schrifttum” Der deutsche Schriftsteller I, 1 (1936), 9.

26. Die Schülerbücherei, p. 88.

27. Fr. Jürgens, “Jugend und Buch im Neuen Reich; Eine Buchbesprechung” Jugendschriften-Warte 39, 12 (December, 1934), 85–87.

28. Ludwig Göhring, “Vom Wesen der Jugendschrift. Die Meinung eines alten Erziehers” Jugendschriften-Warte 33, 10 (October, 1938), 58–60.

29. Franz Lichtenberger, “Grundsätzliches zur Jugendschriftenfrage” Jugendschriften-Warte 45, 1–2 (January/February, 1940), 85–87.

30. Wilhelm Fronemann’s letter to the Reich Minister of Education in Berlin was dated August 5, 1933. It is cited in full by Aley, pp. 15–16. For Barfaut’s less favorable view of Fronemann see p. 215.

31. Wilhelm Fronemann, “Idee und Aufbau der deutschen Jugendliteratur und die Frage der Jugendschriftenverzeichnisse” Jugendschriften-Warte 39, 1 (January, 1934), 1–2.

32. Wilhelm Fronemann, “Zur heutigen Lage der Jugendlesekunde” Jugendschriften-Warte 39, 2 (February, 1934), 25–28.

33. Ibid., 28 and 26. Much more radical (and less ambiguous) in regard to racial issues were the definitions of the new tasks of children’s literature as stated by Max Fehring, who in 1933 was placed in charge of all children’s literature affairs in Hamburg. See Max Fehring, “Die geistigen Grundlagen der Arbeit am Jugendschrifttum” Jugendschriften-Warte 38, 7 (July, 1933), 49–52. Fehring clearly demanded a new direction in children’s literature that would take its inspiration from the Volkish values of the past (including the heritage of Germanic folklore), but which would essentially integrate these with the Volkish ideals of the Nazi ideology and its racial objectives. In particular, see the definition of “völkische Jugendschrift” on p. 52.