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  • Children's Theater in East and West Germany:Theories, Practice, and Programs
  • Jack Zipes (bio)

Germany has never been known as a children's paradise. In fact, if one wanted to be crass, one could argue that even dogs have received better treatment than children in Germany. For years childhood has had a status similar to that of the immigrant who is forced to suffer through a series of tests to prove his "worthiness" as a good, loyal, obedient citizen before being recognized by the state. Children have been drilled, groomed, manipulated, and processed to serve the family and state so that they won't question these institutions and will comply with ruling class strictures. Compulsion has been the main educational experience. Children have been expected to take arbitrary authority seriously. But they in turn have not been taken seriously, nor has children's play. The result of the authoritarian upbringing which has been common throughout Germany is, as Wilhelm Reich has pointed out, "the individual who is forever afraid of life and of authority and thus creates again and again the possibility that masses of people can be governed by a handful of powerful individuals."1

Recently, German authoritarian attitudes toward children and children's education have undergone some changes. Here "recently" has two different meanings. In East Germany it is the period after 1945 when communist educators revamped the traditional family structure and educational system to bring about more equality for workers, women, and children. In West Germany it means after 1968 when students and other progressive groups challenged the patriarchal family structure and exclusive educational institutions and initiated all kinds of anti-authoritarian programs which are still being developed. In both instances positive gains have been made in respect to the general condition of children: they are now being taken more seriously by groups of adults who are fighting for the rights of children to determine their future and realize their full creative and critical potential. Admittedly, the struggle for children's rights is being waged by relatively small groups of progressive-minded adults, but these people have carried the struggle into all spheres of social life—families, schools, youth centers, governmental agencies, and theaters. In particular, the recent development in children's theater is considered by some to be most significant, and they argue, as did Walter Benjamin in his now famous essay Programm eines proletarischen Kindertheaters, that children's theater is the only place where children can fulfill their childhood.

Of course, Benjamin wrote about a specific children's theater, a proletarian theater for and by children which had been organized by the Latvian actress Asja Lacis immediately after the Russian Revolution. This proletarian children's theater is not the goal of most children's theaters in East and West Germany. [End Page 173] The majority of them insist upon having adults as directors and performers who set the policy and tone. These people profess a sincere concern for the welfare of children and seek to stimulate their minds and imaginations. In both East and West Germany they have aimed at making children's theater more popular, and indeed, its popularity has risen remarkably since 1945. However, West German leftists, who are adherents of Benjamin's program and are organizing radical theaters for and by children, are suspicious about the seriousness of those adults who have popularized children's theater, especially when they can prove that it has remained unpopular. According to these radical groups, a genuine, popular children's theater which responds to the real needs of the majority of children in both Germanies has yet to assume its proper form.

The German leftists may well have asked the right questions again. Why is it that great effort has been exerted to make children's theaters commercially and politically popular? Why are children, who have generally been excluded, now included as important cultural components in the domain of theater? These questions form the framework of my analysis of contemporary children's theater in East and West Germany. Underlying the framework are four premises which must be explained briefly if the total approach is to be understood.

First, I shall purposely deal with children's...

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