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
