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
