Kinderliteraturgeschichten: Kinderliteratur und Kinderliteraturgeschichtsschreibung in Deutschland seit 1945 by Andrea Weinmann (review)

How was the history of children’s literature written in postwar Germany, both East and West? What were the underpinnings of this historiography, which epistemological, ideological, aesthetic influences shaped the perception of children’s literature on both sides of the iron curtain?

Andrea Weinmann, lecturer at the Institute for Children’s Book Research at the University of Frankfurt, pursues a double aim: On the one hand, she proposes to show what the historiography of children’s literature looks like. On the other hand, she intends to develop a “theory of literary historiography” and subsequently put it to the test with her own version of a history of children’s literature.

Having defined her object of study, Weinmann addresses the “fundamental questions of literary historiography,” most notably: Which overarching concepts and ways of periodization should shape literary history? In this theoretical part she defines and discusses key methods and concepts (41-95). While selection, categorization, and hierarchical prioritization are procedures central to any historiographical endeavor, the histories of literature ought to be more than literary canons or simple annals. Instead, they should make apparent the forms and forces of literary change and judge the works by the standards of their time. However, our historical vantage point should allow for the identification of “milestones,” which are both innovative and representative (66). Furthermore, Weinmann insists that literary historiographies have to go beyond the literary context to incorporate extraliterary processes. Literature, according to Weinmann, has to be understood both as a symbolic and a social system, and histories of literatures have to take into account the interaction between the two. This is all the more relevant for the history of children’s literature since conceptions of childhood and youth vary greatly over time, altering the ways in which literature for children and youth was regarded.

In the second part of her study, Weinmann analyses how different scholars responded to the challenges of writing histories of literature. With this meta-historiography, she sets up the context for her own attempt at writing a history of children’s literature. This section very clearly shows that the historians of literature were well aware of the difficulties their task entailed. They grappled to find adequate ways of conceptualizing and chronologically situating the material, and did not shy away from the central question of what this material should be. They tried to find ways of charting the interactions between the social and the symbolic system. All these reflections remain implicit, however, surfacing mainly in discussions surrounding questions of corpus and the meaning and purpose of children’s literature.

The initial stage of writing literary histories was characterized by fundamental research, consisting mainly in the collection of data. Social historical perspectives only came to bear on literary historiography in the 1980s. Weinmann cites The History of Children’s Literature by Hans-Heino Ewers (incidentally her supervisor) as an outstanding example of a post-reunification scholarly work. According to her, Ewers succeeds in framing the history of children’s literature in terms of a history of modernization. He understands the transformation of literary themes, forms, and functions as expression of social processes of modernization; these processes modify the conceptions of childhood and youth, which in turn change literature. This way, Ewers focuses on processes rather than on rigid period boundaries.

Weinmann’s attempt to meticulously map the methodological and practical difficulties postwar literary historiography has resulted in a rather descriptive and cumulative account. It does have the benefit, however, of uncovering unknown or forgotten facts, of tracing more subtle developments and interactions, and of giving a thorough overview of the main actors and projects both East and West. While the many quotations and extensive footnotes make the reading somewhat laborious, they do give a vivid account of...