Third Reich, that educators simply could not do their job without them:
If we wish to raise heroes, then we will have to expose our children early enough to the concepts of war and heroism. Yet, if the works of the newer writers do fall short of invoking the symbols of the great warriors who have fallen in battle, and if they fail to provide our youth with heroic examples, then they have done their writing in vain. In the poetry of Heinrich Anacker, Eberhard Wolfgang Müller, and Gerhard Schumann our young people will recognize their better selves. Also, if we want to develop in our youth the inborn German character, then we cannot do without the works of Kolbenheyer, Wilhelm Schäfer, and Emil Strauss.26
It is difficult to establish concisely what individual educators were really thinking about such a policy at the time, for they risked their personal safety by publishing a dissenting view; and if indeed they had dared to do so, nevertheless, the censors would probably not have permitted their articles to appear in print exactly as they had written them. The dissenting views that were published were usually confined to matters of pedagogical or methodological concerns but did not touch upon the vital issue of censorship itself. Thus, F. Jürgens, for example, complained in the Jugendschriften-Warte in 1934 that the leaders of the Hitler Youth Organization had displayed “sheer ignorance” in defining the concept of Volkish literature without an appropriate knowledge of psychology and childhood education.27 Ludwig Göhring even made the point in 1938 that forty years of professional know-how could not simply be “wiped away” by those who were now in power, and that pedagogical and psychological considerations still played a role in evaluating children’s books.28 Neither one of them, however, addressed the more serious issue of the intrusion of ideological values into children’s literature but seemed to take them for granted.
Some well known members of the former Children’s Literature Association were equally ambiguous when stating their views on the status of children’s literature after 1933. Franz Lichtenberger, for example, who at the beginning of the twentieth century had still defended children’s literature against the intrusion of political and social objectives when demanding, that children’s books first be evaluated for their portrayal of the “childlike” perspective, as well as for their literary and artistic qualities, now subordinated those criteria to ideological perspectives of Nazism. In 1940 he requested that children’s books be judged according to the following criteria:
1. The National Socialist point of view.
2. An artistic and literary point of view (and, in the case of nonfiction, a scientific point of view).
3. A pedagogical point of view.29
In the article following this listing, he elaborated why the points mentioned would have to be considered in the order as stated. Such an “adjustment” to the Party’s demands indeed appeared like a sad surrender of all the principles of liberalism that had still characterized much of the activity of the former Children’s Literature Association he wrote, but by its very nature, the National Socialist point of view overruled all other considerations. Lichtenberger, however, even went on to condemn international and pacifistic trends in children’s literature of pre-Nazi times. The only theories of value to come from that period were those of Severin Rüttgers, he wrote, as they provided a solid basis for the present revival of Volkish and nationalistic values in children’s literature. He reminded teachers that, at the present time, children’s literature primarily served the “trinity of race, folk, and God,” which was the body, soul, and spirit of the German nation.
Another example of how prominent scholars of children’s literature gradually yielded to the Nazis’ pressure of Gleichschaltung was the case of Wilhelm Fronemann, a leading representative of the former Children’s Literature Association. While in 1933, shortly after the Nazis’ seizure of power, he had written a letter of protest to the Reich Minister of Education in Berlin, pledging for professional and supposedly more independent criteria in the evaluation of children’s books,30 his values gradually evolved in the direction of the new establishment. In 1934, he complained in an article published in the Jugendschriften-Warte that the newer children’s literature publications still lacked the desired good quality, but somehow he seemed to have overlooked the more urgent issue pertaining to the political manipulation of children’s books.31 In 1939, he appraised Severin Rüttgers’ Volkish contributions to children’s literature, while simultaneously expressing his admiration for Karl von Spiess’ racial folktale interpretation, thus implying support for the pre-Nazi as well as the Nazi definition of Volkish literature.32 Even more conspicuous was his recommendation that publishers should pay more attention to the promotion of children’s books that dealt with geopolitics (Raumplanung), hereditary science, genealogy, and racial science, among others, as these served the present educational needs. “It is the highest goal of political education,” he added, “to develop in the individual the feeling that he is an integral part of the racial folk community, and that he lives his life accordingly . . .”33
Plate 15
Hitler Youth Drummers: Belief in Fate and Confidence in the Future
The ambiguous definition of the term “Volkish literature” had its source in the ambivalent attitudes of those who used it. First, there were those educators who rather naively believed that the Nazis’ Volkish attitude indeed was nothing but an innocent concern with a German and Germanic folklore revival based on Romantic and patriotic sentiments. Secondly, there were those who since 1933 had openly embraced a radical change in attitude along racial and geopolitical lines. To these belonged the ideologists themselves and the members of the Hitler Youth Organization. Thirdly, there was a heterogeneous group of persons, among them many members of the National Socialist Teachers Association, who shifted from one point of view to another, while partially hiding behind Rüttgers’ and Krieck’s Volkish theories, yet neither clearly approving nor disapproving of the Nazi ideology. The ambivalent attitudes of these persons belonging to the third group especially helped the Nazis to assert their own policy of Volkish literature, as they accommodated the new “symbolic” interpretation, and, ultimately, their goal of ideological indoctrination.
On a broader scale, the political and ideological demands of the Party tended to prevail in regard to children’s literature. Reich Education Minister Rust made some minor concessions to age group criteria and reading levels through his curricular reforms and “Basic Lists” for the school libraries, yet the goals of German folk education remained unchanged. Also, regardless of the concessions involved, the formal definition of Volkish literature always gave first consideration to the National Socialist point of view, in the case of books intended for the youngest children.
NOTES
1. Rolf Geissler, Dekadenz und Heroismus. Zeitroman und völkish-nationalsozialistische Literaturkritik (Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1964), p. 30. See also: Wilhelm Westecker, “Methode und Form der Buchbesprechung” Bücherkunde (March/April, 1937), 167–180.
2. Heinz Kindermann, Dichtung und Volkheit: Grundzüge einer neuen Literaturwissenschaft (Berlin, Volksverlag, 1937).
3. Norbert Langer, Die deutsche Dichtung seit dem Weltkrieg: von Paul Ernst bis Hans Baumann (Leipzig, Adam Kraft Verlag, 1941), p. 7.
4. Staatssekretär Funk, November, 1934. Cited by Walter A. Behrendsohn, Die humanistische Front: Eine Einführung in die deutsche Emigranten Literatur, Vol. I (1933–1939) (Zürich, Europa Verlag, 1946, p. 25.
5. To deprive publishing houses of paper supplies was just one of the less severe punishments by Party and State authorities in case of rule violations. Serious offenses usually resulted in more drastic measures. See Chapter
