Literatuur Zonder Leeftijd. Jaargang 15

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The GDR: a paradise for children's literature?
Between idealism and control of Marxist-Leninist cultural policy
Sylvia Warnecke

Literatuur in de voormalige DDR was aan strenge censuur onderhevig. Dit gold merkwaardig genoeg minder voor jeugdboeken. Onderzoekster Sylvia Warnecke laat zien dat de Oostduitse jeugdliteratuur garen spon bij de heersende notie dat kinderen onschuldige, niet zelfstandig denkende wezens waren.

Linking the notion of perfect circumstances for artistic production and understanding with the literature that was written for children in a society such as the one that existed in the GDR from 1949 until 1989 is not as paradoxical as it might at first appear.

Many analytical approaches to this phenomenon determine that one of the objectives of such a dogmatic society was to support the creation of a literary canon that strictly followed the prescriptions of an ideologically shaped cultural policy. This is a view constructed due to necessary generalisations and common pitfalls encountered by those who have been pioneers in this field, however, it focuses mainly on a single aspect and thus simplifies the matter immensely. This assumption overlooks important nuances of life in such a society, the friction between dissent and assent among its citizens and the subtle mechanisms of opposing officially dictated rules.

Children's literature in particular was expected to promote the character education of the young generation in the GDR. This instrumentalisation of literature supported the interpretation - and in many cases even the production - of literary texts in a mechanical and rigorously didactic fashion, which disregarded the characteristics of literature as an individually produced as well as read text with a capacity to generate as many responses as there are readers. Nevertheless, the sub-system children's literature in the GDR was in spite of the at first sight limiting context of Marxist-Leninist cultural policy a greatly productive and creative field.

Children's books seldom became the subjects of public debates, and rarely substantial ideological controversies transpired in connection with children's literature. Exceptions were film versions of children's books such as Island of the Swans by Benno Pludra or Scarecrow by the Russian writer Vladimir Shelesni-

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kov. There also hardly ever happened any radical interventions by the censoring authority. That is why topics such as the pollution of the environment, educational problems, shortcomings of state schools and the fate of outsiders in GDR society could be taken up in children's books long before they were reflected on in the sphere of adult literature.

This more unobstructed and liberal setting, which resulted from the officially sustained notion that children's books were rather innocuous due to their nature as purely educational texts, enabled publishers to issue a number of rather critical children's books. A further explanation for the generally less authoritarian practice in this literary field is the contradiction between the official definition of the child in GDR cultural policy and the reality of writing and publishing books for children.

On the other hand there should not be overlooked that there was a great number of children's books published which maintained the direct translation of ideological concepts into literature.

This analysis is an attempt to shed light on the extraordinary interplay of influences, which characterised the development of children's literature in the GDR, and which created the basis for the production of a literary canon that was marked by the contrast between party politics and writers' growing conflicts with socialist society.

Socialist personality

In 1976 Günther Ebert, a Germanist in the field of children's literature, explained the officially acknowledged definition of the child:

‘The child as such does not really exist for us socialists. The world of the child is not like an island where it can escape from a corrupt reality. The bourgeoisie considered the child a symbol for harmony and being truly natural, whereas adults were seen to have lost this ability. In our socialist society the child is conceived as a genuine human being and equal to an adult right from the start. Working politically with the child shows that it is not an object but a subject of education.’^1.

This highly idealistic statement proves that childhood, as a distinctive stage in life, did not really exist in the official philosophy. The reality of life in the GDR

1. ‘Das Kind gibt es gar nicht. Für uns Sozialisten ist die Welt des Kindes kein Refugium, keine heile Insel, auf die man sich vor einer schrecklichen Wirklichkeit zurückziehen, auf der man kein abstraktes Menschenbild aufbauen kann.’ G. Ebert, ‘Das Kind in unserer Literatur.’ In: Klaus Walter, Ansichten, Aufsätze zur Literatur der DDR. Mitteldeutscher Verlag Hall, 1976, blz. 289.

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however demonstrated, that the child was seen as an empty vessel to be filled with the wisdom of Marxist-Leninist ideology in order to make it become a socialist personality, who will live according to the rules set by state officials. That is why reality in the GDR could never live up to the idealist theoretical model of the child as an equal partner of the adult.

Still, it is interesting to turn round the equation that children were equal to adults and assume that adults were seen in the same light as children. Then, the concept of an educational state makes sense in a way that adults as well as children continuously needed guidance, control and support. Theoretically, people were not regarded as equipped with the ability to judge for themselves. This might sound rather extreme, but one has to remember that their ability to critically analyse the society they lived in was underestimated and also feared by Party leaders simultaneously. The government's claim to have the right to truth and control went hand in hand with the assumption that people needed to be told right from wrong. This contradiction was an expression of the everpresent double-edged nature of Marxist-Leninist ideology and its application to every day life in the GDR. At the same time there existed the idealism of this ideology which had a religious quality - the hope to build heaven on earth. The state was striving for the best possible life for the people, but only for those who acknowledged the government's authority.

Coming back to the fact that children's literature was a sphere with less categorical intervention than adult literature, the notion that children were not able to think for themselves ironically promoted an inadvertent lack of supervision. For in line with the official definition of the child it was not believed to be likely that they would reflect experiences critically.

Regarding children's literature, the choice of topics and styles in children's books was supposed to be determined by the extent to which the texts were to fulfil the task of socialisation. The favoured method of writing for children was to be the method of socialist realism, the criteria of which were partiality, being devoted to the people, the promotion of socialist ideas and an equal balance of fantasy and realism. Fantasy was to be an important feature of children's books, since officials believed that this would be in line with children's reading habits.

Writers were instructed to try and make the world children lived in transparent to them but also to show the changeable nature of it.

Until the mid-sixties, the majority of GDR children's books had been authoritarian and similar to the children's books written in the period of the German Enlightenment. The characters of adults in these texts were equipped with all essential knowledge, they were guiding the child. In the late 1960s children's books became to some extent an illustration of life in the GDR, and were sup-

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posed to prepare children for their life in a socialist society. The child as an individual gradually gained significance. In the late 1970s writers developed a romantischer Kindheitsmythos, which was a result of them turning towards Romanticism as part of the nation's cultural heritage. Then the child played the role of an advocate of human values; children were seen as innocent, uncorrupted individuals who acted according to the ideals of social interaction. That is why the child as a focus of the literary text could go as far as teaching adults moral values and prove the grown-ups’ actions to be wrong.

Publishing houses and Party politics

After all, children's literature was given much attention and held in high regard in the GDR. The promotion of children's books and the creation of a canon GDR children's literature was an objective of governmental policy right from the foundation of the state onwards. In the light of the facts so far indicated, it may sound contradictory to state that the sub-system children's literature should have inspired creative thinking, or served as a realm for trying out new literary techniques and discussing new ideas. If literature had developed according to official principles, all the texts written for children should have turned out similar.

From the beginnings of the establishment of the system of GDR literature, the institutions dealing with children's books were made part of the wider context of the literary system of the GDR. When the central authority for literature and publishing was founded in 1951 its department of censorship, officially called department of approval, was divided into seven sub-departments. One of these seven was the section for children's books and books for young adults. The fact that children's literature and literature for young adults were significant enough to be allocated one sub-department of their own within this authority proves the importance attached to children's books. The GDR as an educational state paid much attention to the establishment of an independent sphere of children's literature, which was granted the same recognition as literature for adults.

Twelve publishing houses focused mainly on the production of children's books and another six provided specific literature for children and teenagers, apart from their primarily adult-oriented publications. A leading publisher was the Verlag Neues Leben, established as early as 1946 - three years before the foundation of the GDR. The Verlag Neues Leben issued about six thousand five hundred titles a year up to 1990. The other major publisher in this field was the Kinderbuchverlag, established in 1949. It published about four thousand five hundred titles a year up to 1990. In total, there were more than fifteen thousand titles of international children's literature published in the fifty years of the

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existence of the GDR. There were also six thousand editions of the fifteen children's magazines and newspapers published in East Germany from 1949 until 1990. Since economy and culture were public domains and their development and progress subject to governmental planning, the work of editors as well as writers was supposed to follow ministerial guidelines and was under strict administrational control.

The biggest publishing houses as party-owned business enterprises were under double supervision and also linked to one of the state's mass organisations. In the case of the Verlag Neues Leben, it was made the official publisher of the mass organisation -Freie Deutsche Jugend - but it was at the same time supervised by the DVK - Druckerei und Verlagskontor. The DVK was the holding of the finance office of the SED and dealt with the economical circumstances of the publisher's business.

The ideological and cultural guidance of the publishers was undertaken by the mass organisation they were assigned to. In addition, the relevant authority within the central committee of the SED had say in the publishing practice. These were the conditions for a situation when at one time six different institutions were running the Verlag Neues Leben.

This rather confusing network did not prove to be entirely disadvantageous for the publishers. They often managed to get a bigger share of the scarce paper supply by asking the representatives of the mass organisation linked to their house to speak up for them in meetings. At this point there has to be mentioned that the shortages of paper and limited printing capacities had as much an effect on processes in the literary sphere as censorship.

The influence this dilemma had on the enforcement of the cultural policy is remarkable. In order to get a bigger share of the paper supply, the publishers followed party guidelines by the book and as a result constantly helped enforcing principles of the SED's cultural policy.

As early as 1950 the GDR government enforced a law which was seen as the basis for a new socialist children's literature.

The law was to be put into practice with the help of institutionalising not only the production and distribution of books but also the way of reading fiction taught at schools. That's why in the late fifties the Ministry of Culture began to establish a separate network for the promotion as well as the control of the sub-system children's literature. This was a consequence of the enforcement of the concept of a literary society advocated by J.R. Becher, the first Minister of Culture, after 1956. He strongly supported the idea of making children's literature an equal part of the official canon GDR literature. The concept represented a first advance towards a new democratic and truly socialist litera-

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ture for children. The most efficient way to realise the plan was to start a focused literary education at schools. Children's books as well as guidelines for teachers for a detailed analysis of these texts were made part of the school curriculum in 1956. The fact that children's literature had been added to the canon Nationalliteratur der DDR had far reaching consequences. Most importantly, a much bigger amount of financial, organisational and material support became available in the field of children's literature. Another consequence of this ministerial decision was the establishment of an extensive institutional network linked with children's literature.

The following illustration outlines the basic layout of this network:

The Kuratorium was meant to be the linking element between the various parts of the sub-system children's literature. One of its tasks was maintaining progress in the field of children's literature in order to ensure the development of a genuine GDR children's literature. Given that it did not have much influence in the sphere of literary production, the Kuratorium did not become a supervising institution. Nevertheless, the Kuratorium had a major influence in nominating authors for literary prizes, and it usually exercised this power in a positive fashion. Positive in a sense that not only writers conforming to the system, but also authors who had problems with government authorities were awarded literary prizes. This was not simply used as a means of appeasing writers, but also employed to encourage more authors to engage in writing children's books.

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An executive agency of the Kuratorium was the Zentrum für Kinderliteratur in Berlin. It published the Kinderliteratur-Report and the Schriftenreihe zur Kinderliteratur, twenty-five editions of which had been issued until 1988. The Zentrum also established an extensive archive on the history, theory and practice of children's literature. The Zentralstelle für Kinderliteratur in Dresden was responsible for the promotion of research in children's literature. The first edition of the quarterly Beiträge für Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, a journal dedicated to research in children's literature, was issued in 1962 by the Kinderbuchverlag. It was in print until 1990.

There were in total fourteen publishers including children's literature in their repertoire. More than two hundred and fifty authors wrote fiction, poetry and plays for children. Taking into account the writers of non-fictional texts this number doubles. More than one hundred illustrators worked for the Kinderbuchverlag solely. Over fifty translators had specialised in the translation of children's books. The Kinderbuchverlag also awarded four different literary prizes alone. From 1968 onwards the academy of the arts in Berlin awarded the Alex-Wedding-Preis for children's literature. The most highly nominated literary award, the Nationalpreis für Literatur, was often awarded to writers of children's books.

The promotion of reading books was another main focus of the work of the Kuratorium. One third of the stock of all libraries in the country - twelve million titles - was reading matter for children and teenagers. Being a member of a library was free of charge. On average every single registered child had twentythree books on loan a year.

Other remarkable features of GDR children's literature became the considerable number of well known authors who wrote books for children as well as adults, and the fact that authors could gain exceptional nationwide popularity because of a children's book they had written. A renowned writer in this respect became Franz Fühmann whose recognition was based as much on his adult literature as on his children's books. He was the most influential author of children's books not only because of the many titles he published, some of which were even made part of the school curriculum. Fühmann initiated theoretical discussions about writing children's literature. His contribution was so valuable because he added an innovative quality to the theory of children's literature. His opinion seems rather natural, but in the light of GDR cultural policy it added a less contrived angle. He supported the idea that reading literature should most of all be fun for children, secondly, it should also be fun writing it and thirdly, the author should trust the judgment of his young readers and not merely attempt to instruct them with his texts.

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After having attempted writing for children in line with official guidelines in the early 1960s, Fühmann was the first author to publicly argue that the direct application of official directives to the production of literary texts would result in a loss of poetic quality and an over-simplification in the representation of societal issues in literature.

Myths

Considering these facts and figures the GDR appears to have been a paradise for children's literature. As indicated earlier, the at first sight restrictive governmental outlook on the function of literature in socialist society unintentionally turned out to be rather supportive of the establishment of an independent sphere of children's literature.

However, children's literature was influential in a wider sense. Using a state initiated publishers' project as an example I am seeking to demonstrate how it became possible for children's literature at times to provide scope for less restricted writing as well as critical thinking.

Following a shift in the policy regarding the incorporation of cultural heritage in literary texts in the early sixties, the Ministry of Culture initiated a project that was meant to introduce myths of classical antiquity as well as sagas and epics up to the Christian Middle Ages to children. The original idea was to teach children how recurring themes in literature and to free this heritage from the context of elitist bourgeois thinking. The 1976 edition of the history of GDR literature explained the choice of myths of classical antiquity as a theme to be incorporated into children's literature as follows:

The reception of myths of classical antiquity is useful in a sense that it helps giving us an account of experiences of people in the past for our children in the present. They prevent children from the danger of turning away from political problems towards a surrogate reality.

Dealing with myths also turned out to be a strong movement among artists against the officially ordered trend of focusing solely on the every day life of the working people - called the Bitterfelder Weg.

The Kinderbuchverlag and the Verlag Neues Leben were the two publishing houses assigned to carrying out the plan. As it turned out, the task of incorporating myths stimulated a unique literary discourse, often opposing the dictated rules. First of all, dealing with myths enabled writers to engage in a philosophical discussion of the concept of a socialist Utopia. A lot of artists of the young generation who had started writing in the 1950s believed that the GDR was the alternative to living in a Capitalist society. However, having gradually become disillusioned with the reality of political practice in the GDR, they still advocated

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the ideological essentials of Communism in the prime paradigm of a socialist Utopia. This paradigm combined an ideal of the alternative to living in Capitalist structures as well as the respect for the historical achievement of the united forces of all groups that had lead to overthrowing the Fascist regime in Germany.

Since the sphere of children's literature was under less rigorous supervision literary texts could be published indirectly questioning the goals of Party politics and at the same time examining the contradiction between ideological objectives and their accomplishment in the GDR.

At times of serious political tension within the country, writers turned towards writing children's books. In connection with the project of re-narrating myths this tendency became most evident. There were various incentives for authors to contribute to the project.

Firstly, writers were often able to publish a children's book more easily than a book for adults. Secondly, for many writers contributing to such a project was lucrative work. Thirdly, writers felt that writing for a young readership helped them to write more freely and make them less inhibited about testing new ideas. Moreover, Stefan Heym called writing for children a way to relieve his tormented heart and mind thus making writing children's books a kind of self-therapy.

Fühmann characterised writing for children the hardest and at the same time easiest task to fulfil for an author. When writing his adaptation of the Prometheus myth he stated that writing for children was taking sides par excellence. His statement indicates that when writing for children an author cannot get away with simply hinting at problematic questions without offering sincere answers.

Franz Fühmann was the author who contributed most titles to the project: Reinecke Fuchs (1963) - an adaptation of the Low German fable of Reinike de Vos, Das hölzerne Pferd. Die Sage vom Untergang Trojas und von den Irrfahrten des Odysseus (1966) - based on Homer's play about the Trojan war, Shakespeare Märchen (1968) four Shakespeare plays re-narrated as Fairy tales, Das Nibelungenlied (1971) - a very crucial text in the context of the Fascist period in German history. Fühmann's most accomplished work for the project was the first part of a trilogy dealing with the Prometheus myth (1974).

Other themes taken up by authors for a rendition were: Parzival by Werner Heiduczeck in 1974, Tristan und Isolde by Günter de Bruyn in 1975, Die seltsamen Abenteuer des Parzival nach Wolfram von Eschenbach by Stefan Hermlin in 1974, by the same author Das Argonautenschiff - the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, and Herakles by Rolf Schneider in 1977.

Writers such as Günther de Bruyn, Fritz Rudolf Fries and Rolf Schneider turned to writing the first and in some cases only children's book of their career by contributing to the publishers' project when a major crisis in the cultural-politi-

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cal sphere of the GDR emerged in 1976 with Wolf Biermann being expatriated. Another unexpected outcome of the project was that myths became a more widely used theme in GDR fiction in general. A lot of the books written for the project were made part of the school curriculum as well. Many of the titles were awarded national as well as international literary prizes. These books became some of the most popular children's books in the GDR and were read by many adults as well. The effect of these texts attracting a cross-over audience was significant for the role children's literature grew to play in the GDR. On the one hand the literary characteristics of the texts were such that adults enjoyed reading them as much as children though for different reasons. For many adults literature - not exclusively children's literature - took on the role of a surrogate newspaper, where they could engage in a debate about societal issues otherwise absent in GDR every day life.

The most unusual outcome of this project has to be that writers along with Party officials and readers altogether gained from the project what they had intended, although their intentions had been very diverse.

The government had managed to initiate the production of a corpus of texts introducing a wide range of themes form international cultural heritage. From the government's point of view writers had put into practice the ideal of using literature as a means of educating children by participating in the project.

The authors involved had made use of the opportunity to engage in a rather open discussion of societal issues by employing myths as a focus of analysis. They tried out new poetological approaches in their texts as well as constructing a new theory of incorporating myths in contemporary children's books. They worked out a stimulating balance of old and new by revealing the poetic delights of such texts without changing the exemplary nature of them or exerting their readers' potential.

And finally, the readership was presented with a number of high quality children's books with superb illustrations, which offered an unusual outlook on the society the readers lived in.

Conclusion

Although the outcomes of the publishers' project might seem too good to be true this analysis proves that the publisher's project represented an uncharacteristic development in the field of GDR literature. It was uncharacteristic in a sense that it realised the intentions of all parties involved. Compared with similar initiatives its outcomes were greatly successful.

The project can be considered an example of how the well-funded and structured system established for children's literature in the GDR could have been

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used to initiate extraordinary literary accomplishments. Moreover, it illustrates a progressive alternative to the dogmatic utilisation of the approach to literature advocated in the practice of GDR Marxist-Leninist cultural policy.