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Germany
1
German Children’s Literature from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth
Century
Hans-Heino EwersIn Germany, as in England and France, children’s literature in the modern sense begins
only in the eighteenth century. A separate market for literature aimed at children and
young people arose, and was carefully watched by the educational and, to some extent,
by the literary community. From the mid-century on, the liberal educational ideas of
John Locke were influential. They led to greater adaptation of the material to the child’s
grasp, but development of the intellect and mediation of knowledge were still expected to
begin at an early age. Into the 1770s children’s literature was dominated by compendia
and encyclopaedic works, packed with facts and omitting no area of knowledge; there
was no feel for child-friendly contents. Most of the corpus consisted of textbooks for
private tuition, spiced with fables and moral exemplary tales. Many such works were
translations from the French; the most outstanding German work is Johann Peter Miller’s
(1725–1789) Historischmoralische Schilderungen zur Bildung eines edlen Herzens in der
Jugend [Improving Tales to Edify a Noble Heart in Youth, 5 vols, 1753– 1764].
France was the great model for German literature, and children’s literature was no
exception. As well as encyclopedias, the weeklies and magazines were translated (thus
Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s Magasin des enfants (1756, German 1758) including the
fairy story ‘La belle et la bête’). Not until 1772 did the first independent German children’s
magazine appear, the Leipziger Wochenblatt für Kinder [Leipzig Children’s Weekly] (1772–
1773) of Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806). A little later Lessing’s friend Christian
Felix Weiße (1726–1804), a renowned comedy-writer of his time, published the
Kinderfreund. Em Wochenblatt [Children’s Friend, a Weekly] (1775–1782), which was
continued as Briefwechsel der Familie des Kinderfreundes [Correspondence of the
Children’s Friend’s Family] (1784–1792) in the style of the English moral weeklies. This
is one of the high points of eighteenth-century German children’s literature, famous not
least for the many dramas for children it incorporates. C.F. Weiße was also responsible
for the first poetry anthology in German for children, Lieder für Kinder [Songs for
Children] (1766).