“The Youth is a Threat!” Controlling the Delinquent Boy in Post-WWII Munich

Introduction

In the summer of 1947, the Munich Youth Exhibit welcomed its guests with a large banner reading, “The worst in Germany, worse than a lack of food, [and] overcrowding . . . is the psychological state of the youth.”¹ Upon entering the first tent of the exhibit, visitors saw “the misery of the young” depicted in various photographs, while numerous statistics and charts supported the notion that juvenile delinquency posed a major problem in Munich.² Visitors then learned about solutions: local youth organizations showed how to lure youth off the streets; state institutions including the youth welfare office provided information on dealing with disruptors. Concerned contemporaries could leave the exhibit without worry: the misery and delinquency of youth was under control.

The Youth Exhibit captured a widespread and highly moralized postwar discourse. Equating misery with deviancy, the exhibit exemplified an obsession with juvenile delinquency in the Bavarian capital. According to popular sentiments, National Socialism, the war, and postwar destitution had led young people of both sexes towards a life of homelessness, black marketeering, and sexual deviancy. Like ruins and rubble, juvenile delinquency became a visual reminder of defeat, destruction, and disorder; its existence jeopardized social order and postwar recovery. Organizing the young within institutions, on the other hand, would paint a positive picture of the current state of affairs. As a result, and even though authorities condemned the strict hierarchies of the Hitler Youth, the general public supported those willing to rebuild the young through traditional schooling, watchful guidance, and rigorous control.

The construction of juvenile wrongdoing had benefits. Whereas it is apparent that some youngsters participated in illegal endeavors given postwar circumstances, local officials generally exaggerated the number of claims so as to frame a broader consensus. Following Michel Foucault’s discussion of the “benefits of illegality,”³ it is clear that the construction of delinquency offered a variety of traditional powers a way to reorganize society. Authorities from across the political spectrum were mainly interested in restoring security, stability, social order, and traditional morality. Bavarian Minister Fritz Schäffer from the conservative party called on Christian morals and the power of the Bavarian homeland as the foundation for recovery.⁴ His social democratic successor, Wilhelm Hoegner, noted in his 1946 inauguration speech “a whole world is out of balance and must return to order.”⁵ Marking the norm across party lines, officials and authorities relied on pre-1914 sentiments. They defined recovery as a return to a state of normality in that way hoping to delegitimize the horrors of National Socialism and the instability of the Weimar years. As the future, youth proved a powerful rhetorical space for discussions about postwar recovery.

As the Youth Exhibit demonstrates it helped that delinquency already had a solution: more intervention by adult authorities. Anxious to prove their ability to create order and ensure recovery, those responsible for controlling youth had an interest in spotting juvenile delinquency. Given such overlapping intentions, representations of youth increasingly became disconnected from reality. Instead of portraying youth as victims of war, authorities increasingly depicted young males in particular as work-shy vagabonds and disruptors. This connection between postwar delinquency defined as male behavioral problems called for state action, thereby making youth a powerful tool and an excellent excuse for expanding mechanisms of social control.

Although attentive to the ways masculinity is formed in relation to notions of femininity, this essay focuses specifically on male youth in the immediate postwar period, presenting the delinquent boy (der verwahrloste Junge) as a specific case study of the rhetorical construction and normalization of male youth masculinity. No stranger in German history since at least the work of Detlev Peukert, the delinquent boy had appeared in the 1920s to purposefully annoy authorities. Such nonconforming behaviors led to numerous quarrels and larger debates.⁶ In the immediate post-WWII period male youth actually had reasons to complain. The young had lost their families, homes, and youth to National Socialism and war. Whereas this explains why a construct like the delinquent boy took a center stage in the immediate postwar period, it is key...