Nazi literature

Children’s Literature During the Third Reich

That which was not molested by the Third Reich during its fractional rule (geographically as well as temporally—they did last only slightly more than 100 times shorter than their own prediction) can fill nearly half a gardening shed. Included in the items omitted from this gardening shed is “Kind-Literatur” or Children's Literature. Echoing Emperor Tiberius' judicious admonition, “What brings the emperorship into disrepute undermines the foundations of the state,” Josef Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg sluiced from all folk and fairy tales any implication that did not follow the thin red Nazi party line. This short essay offers up a few examples of the rather creative ways our best-loved literature was modified and mollified by the Nazi party and gives a sample of the reasoning behind the changes to Children’s Literature during the Third Reich. – David Michael Avender, 2004.

When Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, reforms in all arenas of public procedure were instituted without a moments waste of time. The control over, and censorship of, children's literature was the responsibility of Josef Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, and Alfred Rosenberg, Deputy of the Führer for the Control of the Total Spiritual and Ideological Leadership of the Nazi Party.

In the summer of 1935, the following document was distributed to anyone in connection with the creation, reproduction, distribution, or spiritual/technical interpretation of literature:

The Reich Literature Chamber issues a list of harmful and undesirable literature containing all works of literature opposed to the cultural and political goals of the National Socialist State. It is prohibited by law to publish, sell, lend, borrow, issue, advertise, or store these books. This prohibition applies to works of authors of Jewish or semi-Jewish origin, even if their works are not included in the above mentioned list, and it is also applicable to the literature in the newly acquired territories in the east.

Later, Rosenberg concentrated his efforts on the promotion of "desirable" literature documenting his sentiments in what was known as the "WHITE LIST." Goebbels, on the other hand, promoted the extermination of undesirable works of literature through his own proclamation entitled the "BLACK LIST."

Works of literature could either make it onto the white list, which meant they were fit for public consumption or onto the black list, which meant the required tailoring, or were destined to burn.

The classics of children's literature were most often determined by their utilitarian value to the Nazis; that is, how "useful" were such works in the education of the German young. All works of Jewish origin were banned, all works of fantasy and adventure were also banned, as were any works that were considered contrary to the National Socialist ideology.

In April 1940, Goebbels issued the pamphlet entitled "Harmful Books for Young People under the age of Eighteen." Books on this list were sought for, found out, and burnt. Book burning ceremonies had already begun on May 10, 1933 and steadily enjoyed an increase on public support and popularity. They most often occurred in public squares including a square located in Berlin, where, on one occasion, Josef Goebbels himself was present, and personally cast into the fire works by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Mann, and the author Erich Kastner, who was, in fact, in attendance at this ceremony having no idea that his books were among those deemed as "literary treason" and ones to be tossed into this belletristic inferno.

Fires were fed with such works as Harriet Beecher Stowe's [Uncle Tom's Cabin]]; rejected as it was thought to offer a "false portrayal of the Negro character; The Negros were shown far too sympathetically." Following Uncle Tom's Cabin was Lewis Carroll's work Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, deemed too nonsensical for young German minds and a potential hotbed of furtive subversive sentimentality.

What was saved? Found on Rosenberg's "White List" were most often German folktales which evidently taught German children the "positive spirit of life" through carefully selected symbols that suited the Nazi ideological objective. German fairytales, however, were less popular with the censors. Fairytales, it was thought, were seen as less effective propagandist tools than were the German folktales. Moreover, where folktales often celebrated a Germanic virtue, fairytales too often reflected an individual author's personal philosophy of life, although there were exceptions.

The tales of Clemens Brentano and Hans Friedrich Blunch were saved from the Nazi inferno, for they apparently came closer than many to discovering the roots of Germanic folk beliefs, and thus came closer than most to the spirit of the German folk tale.

Albert Krebs, an administrator for the Ministry of Propaganda often provided the reasoning for which books were rejected and which were spared a fiery demise. Krebs described undesirable works as:

Tired pessimism which too often possessed a sickly preoccupation with elements of the grotesque and the bizarre that were absolutely unrelated to the healthy German folktale spirit. — Günter Grass, The Tin Drum

If a work slipped by the censors it did not slide directly into the hands of awaiting German children. Before any child could bear witness to the work, a secondary investigation was made into the book's author.

Obviously, if the author was Jewish or of any part Jewish, the work was fit for burning. An author of mixed race (one race not being Jewish) posed a bit of a pickle for the Nazi censors. For instance, the case of the aforementioned author Clemens Brentano, whose tales were generally approved of until it was discovered that this man, who had lived nearly a century earlier, was a product of a racially mixed union.

Brentano was part German and part Italian. The Albert Krebs resolution came quick and was typically perverted: Brentano had inherited "the soft moods and the light-hearted spirit of life" from his Italian mother, but the more valuable, and therefore compensating, elements of his style such as "the spirit of toughness, pride, determination, and will power," were inherited from his distinguished incontrovertibly German father. His books, deemed de facto German books, were sufficiently Germanic, and consequently fit for German kinder-consumption.

The Nazi censors did find some works by non-German authors as acceptable; and some were in fact deemed essential to a German youngsters education. Works by the Brothers Grimm were well appreciated as were the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen. Another favorite Nazi treat was Johanna Spyri's novel Heidi. All three were considered to be "as much steeped in German and Germanic thought as were Rembrandt's paintings or Mozart's music."

Spyri's book was an immensely popular book with the Nazis. Many believed it presented Heidi, a young Swiss girl, as that perfect model for young German girls. But the book had some difficulties; the book contained some elements which did not correspond with the National Socialist ideology. Here is where some intricate German tailoring comes in.

They referred in particular to Heidi's many references to the Bible, and to sermons and pious conversations. Under the pretext that such reference were "outdated," that is, no child living in Nazi Germany believed in God anymore, the censors believed such references would only bore the child reader. One propagandist had the solution, a solution adopted many times after, but Heidi was the first. His recommendations, if followed properly, could transform the unacceptable Heidi into a celebrated Nazi German Heidi. The recommendations were small in number and are read as follows:

1. Omit all archaic phrases and expressions that are a part of the original edition. 2. Omit long religious songs and didactic sermons. 3. Transform the "pious rural atmosphere" of the work into a modern middle class German setting.

Christianity shall be replaced with clinical German common sense, and religious musings shall be set aside for "secular contemplations."

Daniel Defoe's classic Robinson Crusoe posed another terrific pickle. Defoe's novel portrays a protagonist exhibiting wonderful virtues of self-reliance and an almost blasphemous self-confidence, but, like Heidi before it, Robinson Crusoe needed some nips and tucks. Administrators made there intended mendings perfectly clear:

1. Robinson and Friday must not appear as equals. The concept of "humanity" as Defoe has emphasized it, unfortunately has given the impression that a certain degree of equality existed between these two characters – an impression that should be avoided under all circumstances.

2. The scene referring to the marriage of the Spaniards to some native women would be omitted, as it offends the German concept of racial purity.

3. Robinson should be presented as a contemporary German hero, for in that way German children would be better able to identify with him as a character.

Much of the same perverted editing was put to the works of such authors as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, George Benard Shaw, and Rudyard Kipling.

After his release from Buchenwald concentration camp, critic, author, and child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim tried to differentiate between the Nazi folk fairy tales and the German folk fairy tales which pre-dated Hitler's rise to power. Bettelheim explained, "The Nazis, in their didactic over-concern with racial values lost sight of international and universal perspectives on the folktale at large."

In his extensive work with children, Bettelheim used the folktales of various cultural traditions as a means of searching for the universal values of mankind. He properly tagged all Nazi children's literature as pure propaganda. Such tales, says Bettelheim, celebrated only that which buttressed the Nazi position and sentiment. Through the folktale's emotional appeal, Goebbels and Rosenberg hoped to foster in German children, not only a love of home and heritage, but also a love of heroic German virtues. Virtues that would serve as a basis for indoctrinating young minds into the values of the Third Reich. Whereas educators today tend to perceive in folktales a potential bridge for international understanding, the Nazis saw in them a means of fostering ethnic pride and, consequently ethnic chauvinism, as well putting forth the spirit of racial discrimination.

In the final analysis, those men who censored children's literature under the direction of Hitler cared less about preserving the purity of German Folktales than about developing a tough-minded master race that would someday conquer and rule all of Eastern Europe. Their task, had that happened, would have been to ensure the purity of all elements of literature as well as the purity of the populace who might have been able to read them.