haupt duringthe 1970sand 1980s.²³The enduringdisregard for didacticismin
literatureisone reason for the neglect of children’sliterature ingeneral; another
involves the disciplinary blind spots thathavepreventedmore interdisciplinary
approachestothe educational initiatives, pedagogical theories, and literaryrep-
resentations concerned with childhood and adolescence. In fact,evensome so-
cialists earlyonquestioned the need for,and value of,aproletarian children’s
literatureand defendedthe tradition, embraced by reform pedagogy, of using lit-
erature exclusively for the cultivation of fantasy worlds set apart from everyday
life. However,their growingfrustration with the existingchildren’sliterature and
its promotion of conservative moral values and bourgeois behavioral norms
through picture books and cautionary tales compelled moreand more activists
to look for alternatives, whether in the form of socialist appropriations of classic
tales or proletarianversions of folk characters.Meanwhile, theauthors of prole-
tarian children’sliterature took advantage of the technological advances in pub-
lishing thatmade possiblethe democratization of readingand writing and al-
lowed them to reach children through the unique didactic powers of fiction.
Ruth Fischer,the sister of Hanns Eisler,once described the sharedgoal of
socialistauthors, educators, and activists as follows:“We describe what we
know.[...]Wedescribe what everyone should know.”²⁴While socialist and com-
munist pedagogyremained firmlyinmale hands, some of the most successful
authorsofproletarian children’sliteraturewerewomen–evidence ofagendered
divisionoflabor that also aligned imaginary worlds with femaleperspectives.
The works produced under such uneven conditions coveredawide rangeofgen-
res,from Hermynia zur Mühlen’ssocialist fairytales (with illustrations by George
Grosz) inWasPeterchens Freunde erzählen(1921,What LittlePeter’sFriendsTell)
The standardworks areIngmar Dreher and HansgeorgMeyer,Die deutsche proletarisch-rev-
olutionäreKinder- und Jugendliteraturzwischen 1918 und 1933(Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag,1975)
and HorstKunze and HeinzWegehaupt,Spiegel proletarischer Kinder- undJugendliteratur,
1870 – 1936 (Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag, 1985). Historical materials on the topic have been reprint-
ed in Manfred Altner,ed. and intr.,Das proletarische Kinderbuch. Dokumente zur Geschichte der
sozialistischen deutschen Kinder-und Jugendliteratur(Dresden: VEBVerlag derKunst,1988).Fora
recent assessment,see HelgaKarrenbrock,“Sozialistische Kinder-und Jugendliteratur,”inDie
Kinder-und Jugendliteratur in der Zeit derWeimarer Republik,2vols., ed. Norbert Hopster(Frank-
furt am Main: Peter Lang,2012), 2: 587–608.ForanEnglish-languageaccount, seeLuke Spring-
man,Comrades,Friends,and Companions:Utopian Projections and SocialAction in German Lit-
eraturefor Young People, 1926– 1934 (NewYork: Peter Lang, 1989).Foracomparative
perspective,see Julia L. Mickenberg,Learning fromthe Left: Children’sLiterature, the Cold
War, and Radical Politics in the United States(Oxford: OxfordUniv ersityPress,2006).
Ruth Fischer andFranz Heimann,Deutsche Kinderfibel(Düsseldorf:W. Schroeder,1986) n. p.
First published in 1933.
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