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
