their members to a feeling of “unity” for their common cause. Part of their program was to settle young Germans as peasants in the Eastern Provinces, particularly where they thought that German ethnic identity was endangered by foreign cultural influences. In 1925 the initial group of the Artamanen had only 140 members, but the idea for which they stood evidently caught on, for two years later their membership had grown to 1,800. Much of what we consider an integral part of the Nazi ideology, including the Nordic Germanic orientation and the emphasis on the peasant cult, was derived from the influence of the Artamanen on the Nazi leaders. Walther Darré, Reich Peasant Leader and also Agricultural Minister under Hitler, was a member of this movement,65 and Heinrich Himmler, Reich Leader of the SS, was for some time a leader of the Bavarian Artamanen group. After 1933, the Nazis formally integrated the Artamanen into the Reichssiedlungsamt (Reich Settlement Office), and from their settlement program and community service the Nazis developed the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Workers Service). | Rödiger, | Eisenbeck, | and Kretschmer of the Reich Workers Service, were all former members of the Artamanen, thus providing a direct line of continuity.66 Robert Proksch, Head of the Reichsamt für Deutsche Bauernbevölkerung (Reich Office for the German Peasant Population) was also a former member of the Artamanen and continued to appraise its history even after Hitler’s seizure of power. Proksch saw a direct influence of the Artamanen on the Nazis’ determination to conquer the “living space areas” (Lebensraumgebiete) in Eastern Europe.67 The Artamanen, he said, believed in strength based on culture and race, as well as on God’s deepest knowledge. Their “blood-and-soil” concept motivated young people to become peasants and to move across the German frontiers into the Eastern Provinces, so as to “fight for German ethnicity” (it.), thus helping the nation as a whole. To achieve their objectives, the Artamanen felt that it was necessary to cultivate German and Nordic Germanic folklore within dramatic settings, so as to build up a “sense of community” among Germans at home and abroad.68 In that sense they considered folklore as a “weapon” in the struggle toward national unity.
The Nazis were quick to seize upon these ideas for their own purposes. In the Wandervogel movement and the Artamanen movement they perceived perfect examples of how German and Nordic Germanic folklore could be applied to festivals and rituals in such a way as to enhance the “feeling for community”—something toward which they aspired through their “folk education” program. Undoubtedly, they received some of their ideas from Severin Rüttgers, too, who, in various contexts, had emphasized the need to place folklore into “action,” in order to develop in children a strong emotional identifiction with the community of the nation. In earlier publications on literary education for elementary school children Rüttgers had begun to defend the idea that it was not enough to read folktales, myths, and legends but that children should experience (it.) them in the context of festivals and celebrations. His 1933 edition of Erweckung des Volkes durch seine Dichtung (The Awakening of the Nation through Its Literature) essentially underscored the need to employ children’s literature and folklore for Volkish-political purposes.69
The very fact that the Nazis did borrow a substantial number of ideas and customs from earlier Volkish groups and individuals, however, does not necessarily imply that these may be held responsible for their misuses within the Nazi Regime. Undoubtedly, some of the “roots” of Volkish thought came rather close to the Nazi ideology, and in extreme cases were identical with some of its aspects. Still, in pre-Nazi times, none of the writers or groups had ever attempted to adopt its ideology exclusively for the entire nation and to implement it by force, while making children’s literature and folklore their instrument of Volkish propaganda. Nevertheless, it appears clear that the Nazis did not invent ethnocentric and racial ideas based on the concept of German ethnicity.
In 1933, the German Youth movement was formally dissolved to make room for the Hitler Youth Organization under the leadership of Baldur von Schirach. Many of its members joined the ranks of the Hitler Youth in the hope that Hitler was the destined | “leader” | of the people as their poet, Stefan George, had prophesied it. Scholars today differ in their views of whether the leadership cult and some anti-democratic tendencies of the Youth movement in pre-Nazi days may be held responsible for the rise of Nazism. Pross maintains that its “blue flower of longing” contained its own poison, whereas Sontheimer believes in its innocence, while he characterizes it as a “movement beyond politics.”70 The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
The Nazis disapproved of the German Youth movement as a whole, mainly because it served a variety of groups with different orientations. Significantly, however, they did try to keep alive all of its activities that had a romantic appeal, including the emphasis on folk songs, storytelling, and such sports as cross-country hiking, along with nature crafts, campfires, and even the solstice celebrations.71 All of these they merged with their own ideology, while superimposing upon them the stamp of uniformity. By 1939, the Hitler Youth Organization was the only youth organization left, and about seven million children and youths were forced to march, sing, and celebrate according to the same blueprints. By that time, some of the activities had already lost their popularity, mainly because they were no longer based on a freedom of choice and because attendance had become mandatory nation-wide.
Given the amount of freedom and the diversity of movements that had still existed in the Weimar Republic, totalitarianism cannot be considered a predestined fate of the German nation or an inevitable evolution of history. In earlier days, the Volkish-political groups still used to be balanced by others representing liberal and international ideas along with the peaceful goal of world understanding. All of these countervailing forces were abolished by force, along with the opposition, when Hitler seized power in 1933.
With the rise of Nazism a didacticism was imposed upon children’s literature for which there was also no equivalent in the past. The didactic trends of earlier times had served at least the moral and religious instruction of the individual child, but now literature and the child were both placed at the service of the State. One of the main reasons why such a radical change in the literary and ideological orientation was not immediately evident to all involved was because the Nazis so cleverly emphasized the Romantic folklore revival72 and pre-Nazi Volkish trends. Many former members of the German Youth movement and others, too, who had been steeped in Volkish thought, came to believe that censorship was a necessary temporary measure to bring to fruition the German dream of national unity. The following analysis will show how step-by-step the Nazis utilized such misconceptions to their own advantage by promoting a “Volkish literature” to strengthen the ideological goals of the Third Reich.
Plate 4
Young Hero of the Reich
NOTES
1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit in Bernt von Heiseler, ed., Goethe, Gesammelte Werke, Vol.6 (Gütersloh, Bertelsmann Verlag, 1954), Part I.
2. Christian Felix Weisse published in 1766 Lieder für Kinder, a volume of children’s songs, that went through five different editions within the span of ten years. His Kinderfreund appeared between 1775 and 1882 in twenty-eight volumes and was translated into French and Dutch. Kunze refers to it as the typical journal of the enlightenment, as it emphasizes morality and the power of reason. See Horst, Kunze, Schatzbehalter: Vom Besten aus der alten Deutschen Kinderliteratur (Hanau, Werner Dausien Verlag, 1965), p. 124.
3. Friedrich Gedike, Gesammelte Schulschriften, Vol. I (Berlin, 1789), pp. 422–423. Cited by Kunze.
4. Bettina Hürlimann, Three Centuries of Children’s Books in Europe (Cleveland, The World Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 99–113.
5. Goethe, in reference to the year 1760. See Kunze,
