Facetten der politisch aufgeladenen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur in Österreich zwischen 1933 und 1945

Zusammenfassung

In the period between 1933 and 1945 children’s and young adult literature appeared in Austria or was published by Austrians in exile. This article argues that there was not only pronounced propagandist, racist, and anti-Semitic literature on the one hand as well as clearly anti-fascist and pacifist works on the other, but that there were also many works exhibiting a range of nuances in between. I will demonstrate through several examples how works that were at first sight unpolitical were used for the National Socialist propaganda, and how texts, for example fairy tales, were altered to correspond to the ideals of the Nazi period. Some rather unknown titles and authors will be presented. I will further argue that it is important to examine children’s and youth literature from this period for three reasons. First, this corpus is increasingly disappearing from the public consciousness. Second, looking at this literature would help bring attention to contemporary issues such as the bullying, exclusion, and violence that many children are subjected to. Third, this period in Austrian literary history has not been well-studied. There are still many gaps in cultural memory here that need to be filled.