International youth book exhibition
The International Youth Book Exhibition was an exhibition of children's and youth books that opened on July 3, 1946 in Munich . It was created on the initiative of the German author and journalist Jella Lepman and was the first international exhibition in Germany after the Second World War .
Concept and story
Jella Lepman that after the takeover by the Nazis after England had fled, returned in 1945 to Germany and worked as a consultant for women's and youth issues for the re-education program of the United States Army in the American occupation zone . She was convinced that immediately after the war the people in Germany not only lacked food and shelter, but also books. She decided to use children's books from all over the world to give German children a new cosmopolitan outlook. Since there was no money available for the purchase, Lepman raised book donations and was able to collect around 2,000 copies from 14 countries.
The exhibition was shown for the first time from July 3 to August 3, 1946 in Munich's Haus der Kunst , which was reopened for this purpose. The International Youth Book Exhibition then moved to other exhibition locations, including the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart , the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and the US Information Center in Berlin, as well as to Hanover , Braunschweig and Hamburg . It was visited by a total of over a million people.
The exhibits later formed the basis for the holdings of the International Youth Library founded in 1949 .
Lepman described her work on the International Children's Book Exhibition in her autobiographical book The Children's Book Bridge .
Influence on Erich Kästner
Erich Kästner published an enthusiastic review of the exhibition in the Neue Zeitung , in which he claimed to have met the main characters of the books there personally. He later took up this idea again in the children's book The Conference of Animals , which he and Jella Lepman had jointly conceived , by also allowing fictional animals from well-known books to take part in the conference described. Lepman's idea of building peace for the benefit of future generations is the central theme of the book.
literature
- Jella Lepman: The Children's Book Bridge , Fischer, Frankfurt 1964.
- Anna Becchi: Jella Lepman. The founder of the International Youth Library . In: LIBREAS. Library Ideas , No. 25, 2014.