The child is a prominent figure in German literature and in German literary criticism alike. This book examines the ways in which German authors have used the child’s perspective to present the Third Reich. It examines a number of texts ranging from the 1930s to the 1980s. It also considers how children at this time were brought up and educated to accept unquestioningly National Socialist ideology, and thus questions the possibility of a traditional naive perspective on these events. Authors, as diverse as Günter Grass, Siegfried Lenz, and Christa Wolf, together with many less well-known write ... More

The child is a prominent figure in German literature and in German literary criticism alike. This book examines the ways in which German authors have used the child’s perspective to present the Third Reich. It examines a number of texts ranging from the 1930s to the 1980s. It also considers how children at this time were brought up and educated to accept unquestioningly National Socialist ideology, and thus questions the possibility of a traditional naive perspective on these events. Authors, as diverse as Günter Grass, Siegfried Lenz, and Christa Wolf, together with many less well-known writers had all used this perspective and this raises the question as to why it is such a popular means of confronting the enormity of the Third Reich. This study asks whether this perspective is an evasive strategy, a means of gaining new insights into the period, or a means of discovering a new language which had not been tainted by Nazism. This raises and addresses issues central to a post-war aesthetic in German writing.