Christine Nöstlinger's Emancipatory Fantasies

Abstract

Christine Nöstlinger's Emancipatory Fantasies Nancy Tillman Fetz (bio) Children's literature in the German-speaking world, as elsewhere, serves as a revealing mirror to the society in which it thrives, making the study of German children's books and authors a simultaneous inquiry into matters of politics and pedagogy as well as literary culture. One particularly interesting strand of the popular literature in Germany and Austria today is rooted both in the need to come to terms with the past, and in the desire to present new alternative models for present and future society. This provocative literature for children, alternately labeled "Marxist," "socialist," "anti-authoritarian" or simply "emancipatory," has evolved over the last twenty years into an important new aspect of German children's literature that challenges the more traditional children's books which have long dominated the market there. One of the most successful and popular children's authors to emerge from the recent trend of politically and socially engaged German children's literature is the award-winning and now internationally acclaimed Viennese author, Christine Nöstlinger. Nöstlinger's popularity has grown along with her enormous productivity. To date she has written over fifty books for young readers of varying ages, and contributes regularly to Austrian television and radio. Her works have been filmed, dramatized, translated and awarded the highest honors. She has twice won the Austrian State Prize for children's literature. In 1973 her book Wir Pfeifen Auf Den Gurkenkönig (We Don't Give a Hoot for the Cucumberking) was awarded the coveted Deutscher Jugendbuchpreis, roughly the German equivalent of the American Newbery Award. Her novel Konrad was the 1977 recipient of the Mildred Batchelder Award for the best children's book in English translation, and the following year it was chosen one of the books most highly recommended by American school children. Finally, in 1984 Nöstlinger won the most prestigious of all international children's book honors, the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In giving Nöstlinger this award —called by some the "Little Nobel Prize" —the Andersen jury cited Nöstlinger's originality, her consistent development as an artist, her social commitment, and the moral quality of her work. The children's book trade in Germany was slow in getting back on [End Page 40] its feet after World War II, since many branches of industry, including graphic arts and printing, had been destroyed. When book publishing recovered, however, children's authors —with a few notable exceptions —were not ready to deal with the realities of the immediate past, and juvenile literature sought refuge in fairy tales, fantasies and adventure stories. But the events of the 1960s made any kind of escapism impossible for long. The emergence in the early sixties of the extreme right, as evidenced by the Neo-Nazi movement, awakened those on the left to the lack of political education in the schools. The need to work through the events of the past became acute, and for the first time in the postwar era the children's book market saw the production of scores of books dealing with Germany's involvement in World War II. By the mid-sixties much of children's literature had become politicized. The general unrest of that decade —the rise of a dissatisfied younger generation, their protests against anachronistic institutions, the freedom marches against rearmament, the anti-Vietnam war and women's movements —together with the founding of the Institute for Children's Literature Research at the University of Frankfurt all served to give children's book writing and research a new, political direction. At this point, the so-called "anti-authoritarian children's book," with its emancipatory and Marxist accents, came into being. The first products of the Marxist involvement in children's literature came from the Kinderladen or "children's collective" movement in West Germany. The organizers of these alternative preschools made up their own reading materials for use with the children. Eventually a number of small leftist publishing houses —Basis, Weisman, Oberbaum, Rotbuch —were established to publish and promote these works, and they were later joined by several long-standing publishing firms —Beltz und Gelbert, Ellermann, Kindler —which formed divisions...