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Preface

In children’s literature the Nazis perceived one of their most important tools for re-educating children in the spirit of National Socialism. They were not satisfied with controlling their behavior merely by drill and discipline but aimed through children’s books at promoting such values that would induce them to internalize the National Socialist ideology and to defend it enthusiastically.

In order to achieve a total control over the minds of children, the Nazis tried to convey through children’s books the spirit of their Volkish ideology. To that end, they engaged thousands of censors, drafted mainly from the members of the National Socialist Teachers Association and the Reich Youth Leadership Organization, who would systematically screen every book that was published, sold, loaned, purchased, circulated, or discussed. Through school reforms and a reorganization of libraries throughout the nation they further institutionalized censorship measures that would separate the books they preferred from those that were to be discarded. By abolishing all civil liberties and the possibilities of open dissent, and by centralizing the vast network of the censorship apparatus within the general power structure of Party and State, they hoped to reach their goal not within a year or two but certainly in the decades to come. They generally referred to their long-range goals in this regard as the Volkserziehungsprogramm (folk education program).

The Nazis’ censorship procedure followed a “negative” as well as a “positive” direction. The “negative” censorship received its first orientation from Goebbels’ so-called “black lists” containing the titles of works that were to be removed from the schools, libraries, and bookstores because they fell under the category of “folk alien” or “decadent” literature. This process began rather dramatically with rallies and book burning ceremonies in public squares, yet it evolved into a less visible continuous process when the centralized censorship apparatus had been mobilized to take action.

The “positive” censorship was systematically applied after the bulk of the books that were deemed offensive had been discarded. There was nothing truly “positive” about it, except that it helped to fill the empty shelf spaces. The kinds of books that took the place of those which had been removed, however, were just as carefully screened as the rest, perhaps even more so, as they were thought to be the basic tools for forming the “young team” of the future that obediently and loyally would fight for the German folk community and the Führer. The Nazis considered this censorship to be “positive,” as it was supposed to single out everything that would contribute first of all to a positive image of Germany’s past and the National Socialist present. To these ends, they gave particular attention to German and Nordic Germanic folklore, because in the inherited values of the past they discovered ideals and traits that they adjusted to their own political purposes. Such remodelled values they hoped to develop into a mythos appealing to romantic, idealistic, and patriotic sentiments, thus creating the impression that Hitler’s “folk state” was firmly rooted in the traditions of the Nordic Germanic “ancestors.”

The time of the Nazis’ seizure of power coincided with an era in the Weimar Republic when various Volkish groups were promoting the idea of strengthening German unity and national consciousness by emphasizing pride in the German and Nordic Germanic folk heritage. While some of these were already racially oriented, many other circles merely pursued some nationalistic goals. The Nazis cleverly simulated the romantic aspects of Volkish thought, while approaching them selectively and adding weight to racial tendencies. With increasing political control, however, they gradually eliminated all liberal, democratic, and international ideas that used to characterize not only the orientation of some early German writers of the Romantic movement but also various nationalistic circles that by 1933 were not yet entirely integrated within the framework of the National Socialist ideology.

In regard to children’s literature, the Nazis’ cultural policy led to a biased and didactic view of the inherited folk tradition, as well as to an ethnocentric perspective of literary criticism. Through an abundance of books dealing exclusively with the German and “Nordic” spheres of interest, children were exposed to a distorted view of German and Nordic Germanic folklore. At the same time, this policy consciously kept them away from books promoting world understanding across racial and national boundary lines.

I have dedicated a major portion of this work to an investigation of the Nazis’ Volkish-racial bias and its implications for such genres of children’s literature as folktales, myths, sagas, fiction, the classics, and picture books. In the Nazis’ uses and adaptations of children’s literature, whether in regard to reading primers, dramatic activities, or Volkish rituals, I have tried to trace the pattern which emerged from their manipulation of traditional values for the purpose of ideological indoctrination. The analysis of the role which children’s literature and folklore played in the curricular reforms and the reorganization of libraries is intended to give further insight into the Nazis’ relatively consistent practice of institutionalizing their Volkish ideology within the educational system on a more permanent basis.

The full impact of the Nazis’ cultural policy on children’s literature may be estimated only in view of trends that preceded it. For this reason I have devoted the opening chapter to a close investigation of the background pertaining to children’s literature within the context of the broader cultural and political context of pre-Nazi Germany. This analysis will reveal certain weaknesses in Romantic nationalistic ideas that were already evident among some Volkish groups in pre-Nazi days, but it will also reveal how the Nazis distorted other Romantic concepts while imposing upon them their own interpretation. Among the most admirable aspects of Romantic thought which became subject to the Nazis’ abusive policy were those that gave rise to the German and international folklore revival and to the creative and professional development of children’s literature as a respectable discipline.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, literary standards, along with pedagogical, psychological, and universal human perspectives of children’s literature had to be sacrificed to the “one and only goal,” the folk state of the Führer. In the name of the German “folk community,” the Nazis made children’s books into the means toward another end that would perpetuate the power of the Third Reich both at the time and in the future.

I am grateful to the staff of a number of libraries in Germany and in the United States for having made accessible to me the resources that pertained to my research on this topic. I acknowledge with great appreciation the help I received in Munich from the Bavarian State Library, the International Youth Library, and the Institute for Contemporary History, and in Frankfurt from the Youth Book Research Institute of the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University. In the United States I am very much indebted to the University of Illinois Library (Urbana), the University of California Library (Berkeley), the Stanford University Library, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace (both at Stanford), and the Library of Congress. I wish especially to thank Mrs. Agnes Petersen, Miss Mary Schofield, Mr. Adorjan I. de Gaffy, and Mr. | Milorad M. Drachkovitch at the Hoover | Institution and Archives for assisting me in locating some valuable research materials pertaining to my topic. Also, I sincerely thank Mr. H. Shields from the Children’s Book Division of the Library of Congress for guiding me through a maze of relevant literature.

A Research Professorship Grant from Central Michigan University enabled me to travel to various libraries in connection with this project, while it provided me for one semester with released time from teaching responsibilities. I have deeply appreciated this unique opportunity and thank President Harold Abel, Vice Provost Ernest Minelli, Dr. Hans Fetting, and the Committee on Research and Creative Endeavors for their encouragement on this behalf. Thanks are also due to the staff of the Park Library at Central Michigan University, \to Mary Moses (Smith),\ to Carol Swan, and Carole Pasch for some technical assistance.

Finally, I wish to extend a word of gratitude to my husband, Ihor Kamenetsky, for having alerted me to the ideological schemes of totalitarian states that undermine individual moral responsibility and critical judgment. To my sister, Alice Breyer, and to Jürgen, her husband, I acknowledge with thanks their warm interest in this work throughout its creation, and also their loan of some rare-books from a private collection.