The Nazis identified the concept of the individual as “the essence of selfishness” under the influence of liberalism that National Socialism had to overcome. Instead, they hailed the “folk personality.” Far from being a “personality” as Goethe had understood it in regard to a liberally educated person striving all of his life toward creative selffulfillment, the new “folk personality” was supposed to “fit into the whole of the community by submitting himself to all of its subsequent rights and duties.”39 In essence, it was the prototype of the “New Man” of the future, as the Nazis envisioned him. While contemplating the Nazi slogan “Gemeinnutz geht über Eigennutz!” (The Welfare of the Community has Priority over the Welfare of the Individual!), the literary critic Langenbucher explained that life in the folk community was the only life style that would guarantee to a person a “higher existence.”40
In children’s literature publications of the Nazi period such imperative statements were a common occurrence, as they formed an integral part of “folk education” to which literature was subordinated. Children’s book authors usually would talk about the “noble goals” and “honorable obligations” of every individual to submit himself to the interests of the folk community. In one case, an author described this attitude as one requiring “an ethical sincerity, a deep inwardness, and a complete dedication to a given work or task,”41 while another one warmly reminded his readers: “You are a part of the great German folk. This folk is a community which can exist only if all of its members are part and parcel of socialism. This means: think of the welfare of the whole, but remember, too, that in relation to the whole you are only a part.”42
Germandom as a “spiritual task” lay at the very core of “folk education” which Rosenberg pursued in general terms with his Cultural Community, and which Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust followed up through school and library reforms. In broad terms, “folk education” meant “community education” in the spirit of the National Socialist ideology. Ernst Krieck, who is generally considered the chief theorist of Nazi education, emphasized in this process the significance of Nordic Germanic folklore. Folklore itself would have to be transformed into a “total and politically oriented science,” he said, “taking its orientation directly from the folk, in order to meet present-day standards.”43 This meant, of course, that folklore would have to blend old folk traditions with National Socialist values, so as to be of help in forming the “young team” of the future. Krieck was against a materialistic interpretation of race, and in fact, saw in such a view the direct reversal of its “real meaning.” To him, as much as to Rosenberg, race and blood in and by themselves did not have meaning but took on significance only if they were matched by a “racial attitude” that he identified alternately as “Nordic,” “Faustic,” or as “the will toward fate.” In modelling the “attitude toward fate” on the attitude of the Nordic Germanic peasant warriors and the saga heroes of the Nordic Germanic past, Krieck hoped to instill in young people a sense of determination to fight for the preservation of Germandom at all cost.44
In National Socialist “folk education” Professor Krieck and others pursued the idea that the “concrete” concept of the German folk community had replaced the “abstract” concept of humanity at large,45 and that it was the first obligation of all writers and educators to instill in young people a genuine feeling for the “need” to sacrifice the personal will to the “will of the state.” Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust commented on behalf of the new National Socialist goals of education: “German youth now has shaken off the fetters of foreign cultures and accepted a life of masculine discipline including a willingness to sacrifice individual desires to the needs of the community. Thus, they have gained a new conception of community that, over a span of thousands of years, connects them with the heroic youth of Sparta.”46 Far from advocating a Greek model for German children and youth, however, Rust presented them with ideals of their Nordic Germanic “forefathers” who, as peasants and warriors, had tilled the soil and defended their tribes. He felt that especially after the internal divisions of Germany following World War I, it was of primary significance for National Socialism to provide youth with a new purpose in life and a deep faith in their folk heritage, their identity, and their destiny.47
To Krieck, as well as to Rust, Rosenberg and others, the Nazi ideology inevitably resulted in a peasant and ancestor cult that were both endowed with National Socialist meanings and objectives. In this context German and Nordic Germanic folklore assumed a new role in cultural politics, and also in children’s literature, as they were meant to serve as a “political science.” Folklorist Schmidt commented early in the thirties: “Although folklore is never rigid or absolutely at rest, it does represent a steady and permanent force. As the product of the native soil, it is an expression of the cultural community spirit, and as such, it reflects the folk soul but also the ideology of our culture.”48 He perceived in the new dual role of folklore a “catalytic force” capable of counteracting the instability, mobility, and diversity of city life and also, of bringing about a new unity of the German folk under the leadership of the National Socialist Party. It was because of its assumed “rootedness” in Nordic Germanic peasant traditions that Krieck considered the Nazi ideology neither an “invention” of National Socialism nor a temporary means to support arbitrary politics but a “permanent force” of German culture. And yet, he did not regard it as a mere “inheritance” either but rather as an “obligation” to the future. The Nordic Germanic leaders and their followers had presented the Germans with heroic models that should provide old and young with a “stimulus to action,” he wrote. In that sense, the legacy of the past implied a “task” for the future, a “will to become;” and folk education, consequently, was not to be understood as a finished product but as a process, also in the days to come.49
Since Romantic times, the German peasantry had always been considered as a class in which traditional folklore had been preserved much longer and more accurately than in the cities. Ever since the Brothers Grimm had begun to collect folktales from the German peasants, folklorists, and philologists had followed their example in collecting from the rural population the heritage of the past. Since those days, the image of the peasant, too, had risen in popular esteem, partially due to the nationalistic movement that had brought with it a greater respect for the common man and the vernacular. On the other hand, the beginning of the twentieth century had also introduced folklore studies pertaining to the cities—a trend which the Nazis largely ignored. To the Nazis, the peasant was not merely a member of a given class and a “preserver” of folk tradition, but a symbol of the Nordic Germanic ancestor representing the “blood-and-soil” idea of racial strength as much as the spiritual determination of a Nordic warrior. Consequently, they did not portray the peasant in idyllic and peaceful terms but more as the “heroic” warrior fighting for the preservation of his family and heritage.50
In 1935, Professor Hildebert Boehm was called to a chair in “Folk Theory” in Berlin, the first of its kind in Europe. It was meant to explore not only folklore as a political tool at home, in terms of its potential contributions to the Nazi ideology, but mainly folklore abroad. Folklore, race theory, and geopolitics combined were to serve the Nazis in strengthening Germandom abroad, both in the newly won “living space” areas in Eastern Europe and in the borderlands “endangered” by foreign cultures. Boehm called the folklore and peasant policy of the Third Reich not merely a temporary solution but a permanent policy aiming at the fight for Germandom and its preservation.51 It is this goal that Hitler had in mind, too, when he said in 1933: “The question concerning the preservation of our ethnic identity can be answered only if we have found a solution pertaining to the preservation of our peasantry.”52
At the beginning of the thirties, some practical considerations may have played a role in promoting the peasant cult, especially the peasant migrations to the cities. The rural population had declined from about