circulated freely among the more conservative peasant folk in the countryside. By this time, however, the Grimms noted that many of the city folk and the educated elite looked down upon them as “superstitious stuff” not worthy of the printer’s ink. With their publication of the folktales, and especially with their prefaces to the various editions, the Brothers Grimm contributed much to the acceptance of folktales as literature, for they built up a new understanding for the grace and poetry contained in their simple language, vivid imagery and sense of justice.9 The very fact that the work became an instant success in Germany and was reedited several times in expanded editions shows that the German readers warmed to their folktales to an unexpected degree.
Nevertheless, some parents remained skeptical toward the folktale. In 1828, the literary historian Wolfgang Menzel observed: “They are afraid that folktales might implant into their children’s souls some superstitions, or, at any rate, that reading folktales might lead them to be preoccupied with realms of fancy—something that would be detrimental to their schoolwork.”10 Evidently,\these skeptics overrated the role of factual instruction as much as they underrated the role of the creative imagination. Menzel felt that their views reflected a certain narrow-minded attitude and also bad taste. It was a pity, he wrote, that in many cases children were given such moralistic and prosaic stories to read as “Poky Little Franzi” and “Curious Little Lotti,” while their parents kept them away from the rich world of poetry and imagination that lay waiting for them in the world of folktales. We know that similar attitudes prevailed in Great Britain at approximately the same time. In both cases, parents tended to rate “useful” information, explanatory remarks, and a character’s “reasonable” behavior—at least at the end of a given story—far above the “fanciful” adventures of the mind.11
In Germany, the acceptance of folk literature as an integral part of children’s literature, and simultaneously, a greater appreciation of the literary fairy tale, began in the era of Romanticism. Writers such as Tieck, Arnim, and Brentano, for example, not only warmed the general public to collected folktales but also to fantasies, many of which were read by both children and adults.12 To that era also belonged such writers as Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), de la Motte-Fouqué, von Chamisso, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Mörike, all of whom, in their own unique ways, explored the fairy tale for their literary purposes while contributing to the creative growth of children’s literature. The undercurrent of didactic trends was not strong enough to halt the new wave of interest in folklore and works of the creative imagination.13
The Nazis glorified Herder, the Brothers Grimm, and the Romantic movement as a whole, but mainly for their contributions to the discovery of the “healthy folk reality”—not for their discovery of free imagination. Consequently, they would pay tribute to the collectors of German folklore, yet they would largely ignore the writers of fantasy. Even in singling out Herder and the Brothers Grimm for their “positive” contributions to the growth of the German nation, as they put it, they would selectively emphasize their collections of national folklore while they would ignore their contributions to comparative folklore and literature as well as to international understanding.14
And yet, it was Herder who, with his first international folk song collection toward the end of the eighteenth century, stimulated German interest in the Urpoesie (primeval poetry) of many lands. His Stimme der Völker (Voice of the Nations) contained authentic folk songs from a great number of nations, including the American Indians, and its preface supported the idea that, originally, all nations had sung with “one voice” to honor God who had endowed each one of them with an equal share of love. As a true Christian, Herder believed that each nation, like every individual, was equal and unique before God and that it was equipped with a “folk soul.” To recapture this soul, he said, which civilization had partially buried, it was necessary that each nation should collect the folk songs, myths, folktales and legends of the past, for in these was still living the naïve and pure spirit of ancient times.15
The Brothers Grimm shared Herder’s concept of the Urpoesie, which they renamed Naturpoesie (nature poetry). In respecting this theory of its common origin, they kept alive their vital interest in the folktales of other lands. Folklorists from the Scandinavian countries, among them Asbjörnsen and Moe, corresponded with them over many years, and so did folklore scholars from England, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, and Serbia, to name just a few. The Brothers traveled to various foreign countries, and in turn, they received many visitors from foreign lands.16
The poetic and scholarly contributions of the Brothers Grimm to international and cross-cultural studies are quite remarkable by themselves. Wilhelm translated old Danish and old Scottish ballads while studying their background, and in 1823, just one year after its original publication, he translated, together with Jacob, the Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland, to which he added an original essay about the fairies of Ireland, Scotland and Wales.17 Jacob published in 1835 the first study of comparative mythology, the Deutsche Mythologie (Teutonic Mythology) that contained a systematic arrangement and analysis of parallel myths and folk beliefs in all of the “Teutonic” countries. This work is too scholarly to be counted as children’s literature, but like his comparative grammar, the Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar), and his translation of the monumental Serbian grammar, it gives evidence of his international (rather than merely national) orientation in folklore, language and linguistics.
What Herder and the Brothers Grimm told the other nations on behalf of the search for their “folk soul” through native folklore, they applied also to themselves. Undoubtedly, they had strong sentiments for their own fatherland and hoped to strengthen Germany’s self-awareness by reviving her national folk traditions. In this context they considered the Nordic Germanic folk heritage as an integral part of the native German tradition. Their “forefathers” had not been “savages,” they said, but peasants and warriors worthy of respect. As they encouraged their compatriots at home to shake off the fetters of foreign imitations, they called for the development of national pride, hoping that a revival of native folklore would help in promoting this goal.18
A closer analysis of the changing role of German and Nordic Germanic folklore in German culture of the nineteenth century is important for our background study of children’s literature in Nazi Germany, as the Nazis willfully distorted it. Whereas officially they took pride in having initiated a cultural revolution with the establishment of a “New Order” in the Third Reich, in effect, they spent much energy on “documenting” the “evolution” of Nazism from pre-Romantic and Romantic thought. The Nazi writer Dahmen, for example, in his work Die nationale Idee von Herder bis Hitler (The Idea of Nationalism from Herder to Hitler) claimed that Nazism was rooted in the heritage of Herder and the German Romantic movement. Julius Petersen went so far as to expound the idea that in their “Nostalgia for the Third Reich in German Legend and Literature,” the Nordic Germanic tribes had, more than a thousand years ago, foreseen the coming of the “savior,” Adolf Hitler;19 that the Romantic writers had continued this dream, and that the Nazi Regime had finally brought a fulfillment of this prophecy. In their text selections the Nazis consistently gave preference to political Romanticism over cultural Romanticism, while even in this case quoting passages out of context.
Among the early Romantic writers there were some indeed whose interest in folklore and poetry was secondary to a concern with politics.20 They were patriots at heart and strongly nationalistic, although not radically exclusive as far as other nations, races, or traditions were concerned. Among these were Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Ernst Moritz Arndt. In 1810, Jahn published his book Deutsches Volkstum (German Ethnicity) in which he expressed his longing for a renewal of Germandom from its “source.” He shared some ideas with Grimm but had his own plan. Folklore played a definite role in his program, especially folk songs, but in the final analysis, it represented only a minor aspect of his physical fitness program based on the principles of patriotism.21 Yet, folklore fused with nationalistic ideas was to have a very strong impact on the German Youth movement in the years to come, which considered Jahn as one
