The effect of Rousseau’s philosophy of childhood was especially great in Germany; in
educational theory it led to a new movement, Philanthropism, whose exponents set out
to reform not only education but also children’s literature. Their first spokesman,
Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–1790), still used the old form of the encyclopedia:
Elementarbuch für die Jugend [Young People’s Elementary Book] (3 vols, 1770), extended
under the title Elementarwerk [Elementary Work] (4 vols, 1774). But its layout is
adapted to the child’s need for stimuli: it is accompanied by a magnificent collection of
copper etchings after drawings by the celebrated Daniel Chodowiecki (1726–1801).
Another climax of children’s illustration two decades later was the first volume of the
Bilderbuch für Kinder [Picture Book for Children] (1790–1830, 12 vols in all) by the
Weimar publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747–1822).
The younger philanthropic authors undertook a more thorough reform of children’s
literature: notably Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746–1818), the most outstanding and
most modern German children’s writer of the late eighteenth century. This reform is
based on Rousseau’s view that childhood represents a qualitatively self-contained mode
of human being. To cram children full of knowledge that will only be of use to them later
as adults can result merely in empty verbal learning. Children’s literature must divest
itself of its mass of erudition and restrict itself to what is of immediate importance for
the child. Why give the child a teaching that concerns only adults? asks Campe in 1779;
he demands that children’s literature take its cue not only—as was already the case—
from the intellectual understanding potential of the child, but also from its moral needs.
Here the mainsprings of the philanthropic reform of children’s literature are clear:
restriction to the child’s concerns and concentration on the child’s environment. A new
paradigm was born: that of children’s literature as being strictly literature suited to
children. His Robinson Crusoe adaptation of 1779–1780, inspired by the relevant
passages of Rousseau’s Emile and entitled Robinson der Jüngere [Robinson Junior], puts
the reform programme into practice with thoroughness and verve; it was one of the most
successful German children’s books, translated into numerous languages and reprinted
into the twentieth century (122nd legitimate printing 1923). Goethe remarks of Campe,
‘He did incredible service to children; he is their delight and, so to speak, their gospel’ (to
Eckermann, 29 March, 1830).
A further reforming idea traceable to Rousseau’s Emile is the conviction that childhood
can only be understood on its own terms. The adult is stripped of all authority vis-à-vis
the child: child’s world must be respected in its autonomy. Literature deriving from this
concept would not just deal with children’s concerns, but would also put itself in the
child’s shoes and adopt the child’s perspective. Such anti-authoritarian children’s
literature would present children’s experiences independently of, and uninfluenced by,
adults’ values; it would aim to express children’s feelings and perceptions with as little
distortion as possible. This is a view of children’s literature which at first glance seems
to belong to the late twentieth century; but the demand for an anti-authoritarian
children’s literature, one starting from the child, has been voiced since the beginnings of
reformed children’s literature in the early modern social era.
Repeated attempts at reform, always with the same basic tenor, were needed, it is true,
before this reforming impulse could gain broad-based acceptance— something not
thinkable before the mid-twentieth century. Yet the late eighteenth century already
728 THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE