Mother, tell me about Adolf Hitler!

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Translation into Dutch from 1942

Mother, tell me about Adolf Hitler! A book for children of all ages by Johanna Haarer to read aloud, retell and read by oneself from 1939 is a National Socialist reading book . It is considered a "particularly drastic example of anti-Semitic propaganda ". It is presented as a fairy tale and was used during the National Socialist period to indoctrinate children with images of the enemy .

prehistory

The doctor and author Johanna Haarer became known in 1934 through the guidebook The German Mother and Her First Child , which remained on the market in an adjusted version and with a slightly changed title until the 1990s. This propaganda book, commissioned by the NSDAP, followed in 1939 after further advisers influenced by the National Socialists . It was published by JF Lehmanns Verlag .

content

In the idyllic framework story , a mother who is mending something is asked by her children - two boys and a girl - only one of whom is already at school, to tell a story. Instead of a fairy tale, she tells them about the "old German Empire". Then the author first stages negative prejudices against Jews and other " rabble " and later Adolf Hitler , the "superfather", as a savior from them. At the end, the lesson of history is called for entry into the Hitler Youth or the Association of German Girls .

The psychological relationship between mother and children is used in the narrative situation: while the pleasant, omniscient narrator awakens polarizing feelings, Haarer uses the children's sayings to form her “truth”. So she puts the demand for the expulsion of the Jews in the mouth of the children. In the text the alleged otherness between oppositely constructed families is repeated. On the one hand the good, self-sacrificing, honest German Schmitthammers, on the other hand the evil, selfish, devious Jewish Veilchensteins. The typical Jewish stereotypes of the time are ascribed to them from their mother's mouth :

“Veilchenstein's large cloth and fabric shop was on the market square across from Schmitthammer's shop. You laugh at the strange name, and we laughed about it as children [...] In town, people didn't talk about the violet stones. They weren't good people, honest and upright like the Schmitthammers. […] None of us liked the Veilchensteins, not even the children. They looked very different from us and had curved noses and very dark hair. If you talked to them once, they immediately became cheeky and made themselves important. And the longer the war lasted, the more one saw and heard of them. "

- Johanna Haarer : Mother, tell me about Adolf Hitler! (1940), p. 57 f

The 248 pages are divided into 16 chapters, which are illustrated with 57 drawings . The end credits from page 250 of the 1939 edition not only advertise Haarer's educational guide, but also, among other things, for the title Das deutsche Frauenantlitz by Lydia Ganzer-Gottschewski, for Das deutsche Führergesicht by Karl Richard Ganzer and for the book Von brave, heiteren und learned housewives by Else Boger-Eichler.

reception

In the fourth edition in 1941, two years after publication, both the 41st and 78th book were printed. By 1943, more than 500,000 books had already been sold. Steven Barends , also translator of Mein Kampf , translated the book with the title Moeder, vertel eens wat van Adolf Hitler! into Dutch . The translation was sold 15,000 times in the occupied Netherlands between 1942 and 1943 and is therefore a bestseller .

According to a 1978 survey of 50 kindergarten teachers working under National Socialism, the book was considered required reading at the time . It was only recommended in professional journals from the age of eight.

literature

  • Susanne Blumesberger: "The hair is frizzy, the noses are crooked." Enemy images in National Socialist children's books. Using the example of “Mother, tell about Adolf Hitler” by Johanna Haarer . In: Biblos . tape 49 , no. 2 . Böhlau, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2000, pp. 247-268 .
  • Institute for Science and Art , IWK (Hrsg.): Adapted, suppressed, followed Austrian children's and youth literature in the years 1938 to 1945 in comparison. December 2011, p. 11 ff ( univie.ac.at , accessed on August 6, 2019).
  • Ute Benz: Mother, tell me about Adolf Hitler! (Johanna Haarer, 1939). In: Brigitte Mihok (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Volume 8: Publications. 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-025872-1 , p. 466 ff. ( Google.de , accessed on August 6, 2019).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IWK: Adapted, Suppressed, Follows Austrian Children's and Youth Literature from 1938 to 1945 in a comparison of career paths. 2011, p. 11.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Manfred Berger : Women in the history of the kindergarten: Johanna Haarer. In: The Kita-Handbuch. Retrieved August 6, 2019.
  3. ^ Anne Kratzer: Why Hitler still influences the upbringing of children today. In: The time . September 12, 2018, accessed August 6, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b c d Ute Benz: Mother, tell about Adolf Hitler! (Johanna Haarer, 1939). 2013, p. 466.
  5. ↑ a b IWK: Adapted, Suppressed, Follows Austrian Children's and Youth Literature from 1938 to 1945 in a comparison of career paths. 2011, p. 29.
  6. ↑ a b c d IWK: Adapted, suppressed, followed Austrian children's and youth literature in the years 1938 to 1945 in a comparison of career paths. 2011, p. 12.
  7. ↑ a b Ute Benz: Mother, tell about Adolf Hitler! (Johanna Haarer, 1939). 2013, p. 467.
  8. ↑ IWK: Adapted, Suppressed, Follows Austrian Children's and Youth Literature from 1938 to 1945 in a comparison of career paths. 2011, p. 12 f.
  9. ↑ Ute Benz: Mother, tell me about Adolf Hitler! (Johanna Haarer, 1939). 2013, p. 466 f.
  10. ↑ a b Ute Benz: Mother, tell about Adolf Hitler! (Johanna Haarer, 1939). 2013, p. 468.
  11. ↑ Johanna Haarer: Mother, tell about Adolf Hitler! 1939, p. 250 ff. , Accessed on August 8, 2019 .
  12. ^ Wim J. Simons: Juvenile Books in the Netherlands during the German Occupation . In: Phaedrus . Volume 8, 1981, ISSN  0098-3365 , p. 17 ( google.de ).