Nuclear Education in Contemporary German Children's Literature

If we are to reach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is bedtime for a young German child, and her parents read to her a picture book about the comical red-green dragon she has already come to love from an earlier book by the same author. Tonight, however, the dragon's antics have turned deadly, for he has not recognized the terrible danger of the lush warm water filling the pond in which he and his friends frolic.

Fortunately, the main character in Das neue Drachenbuch (The New Dragon Book) is warned in time by a sage frog that the nearby nuclear cooling tower is the source of both the lush warm water and its deadly radioactivity. But what will become of human beings like the young reader? Will she and others of her generation heed the frog's dire warning—and that of author and illustrator Walter Schmögner—against society's unquestioning acceptance of nuclear power's production and "constructive" use?

Unlike many of the other politically "hot topics" of our times, the issue of nuclear power has long-term and very crucial implications for the quality of life that coming generations, including young readers of children's literature, can hope to experience as adults. For this reason, works for children and young people are making an especially significant contribution to the heated debate among Germans about nuclear concerns. Indeed, it appears that the education of Germany's youth about the issue of nuclear power has become a veritable mission for several authors of children's books.

Even among Germans who have supported the use of nuclear power as an energy source, there has been a growing discussion of atomic energy's destructive potential. The recent deployment of a new generation of American nuclear missiles on German soil has sharply heightened European anxiety about the defensive use of nuclear power. Now stockpiled on either side of the border between the two Germanies are some of the most destructive armaments known to our civilization. These weapons have a force which could both devastate the environment of our planet and obliterate the planet altogether.

Germans—and their children—live daily with the reality of both nuclear power plants and stockpiled nuclear weapons, and that has been reflected in a number of the German children's works produced in recent years, including forcefully illustrated picture books, even for pre-schoolers, as well as poetry and prose for the older child. This article explores three German-language picture books which discuss the issue of nuclear power. I make no claim to comprehensiveness, but seek rather to survey several works which are innovative in their treatment of the subject.

Traditionally, Germany's chief source of energy has been coal, mined in the Ruhr Valley. However, there has long been concern about the environmental effects of this source of energy, since the burning of brown coal produces thick sulfuric smoke. For a time, nuclear power seemed to offer a flawless solution to Germany's energy problems, since its generating plants promised to deliver abundant energy at a reasonable cost and without depleting scarce natural resources. Within a relatively short period of time, atomic power plants were built wherever there was water nearby with which to cool their reactors.

While the use of atomic power has never been without its detractors, criticism of it has been growing. The recent nuclear accident which damaged an atomic reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in the Ukraine brought the danger closer to Germany, as radiation from the plant swept across Europe, and the Soviets called on Germans for help in extinguishing the fire which raged within the reactor's graphite center.

Author-illustrator Walter Schmögner, creator of the dragon books cited above, leaves no doubt as to his stand on the generation and use of nuclear power as an energy source. His warning, given in 1981, is especially timely in light of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Schmögner's...