Oz in Germany: Alexander Volkov’s Der Zauberer der Smaragdenstadt

Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has not been a runaway bestseller in German-speaking Europe. The first official translation of Baum’s work into German was done by Ursula von Wiese and published in Switzerland by Morgarten in Zürich in 1940, under the title Der Zauberer von Oz (The Wizard of Oz). The date of the publication indicates that the success of MGM’s film adaptation of the story encouraged its popularization outside of the United States. This fits in with a pattern of cultural exchange between the United States and Germany that established itself at the end of World War II and gathered speed during the Cold War, when the United States viewed the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) as an attractive target market for American products, ideas, and politics. A second translation of Baum’s work for the FRG was done by Sybil Gräfin Schönfeldt and published by Dressler in Berlin in 1964. This translation remains in print in German-speaking Europe and has been reissued by Ravensburger, a children’s literature publishing house, with compelling illustrations by the German illustrator Janosch. This collaboration between Ravensburger and Janosch, as well as other print editions and adaptations of the material from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz currently on the German market, indicate that Baum’s modern fairy tale occupies a modest but creative space in the German children’s literature market.

There exists, however, a parallel tradition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in eastern Germany, one that showcases cultural exchange on the other side of the Iron Curtain and that retains a hearty following. Generations of children in the former socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) read and reread and loved the wizard of the Emerald City, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, the Iron Woodsman, and Elli, the little girl swept away by a hurricane from Kansas to Goodwin’s Land. These characters appear in Der Zauberer der Smaragdenstadt (The Wizard of the Emerald City), written in Russian in 1939 by Alexander Volkov as Volshebnik Izumrudnovo Goroda and translated into German by Leonid Steinmetz for the GDR market in 1949. As with Baum’s story in America, Volkov’s story of the fraudulent wizard became a bestseller in the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. Similar to Baum, Volkov felt pressure from his publisher and readers to write sequels to Elli’s story and keep the narrative alive for the next generation. And, as with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Volkov’s story of the little girl, her dog, and her woodland friends has never gone out of print and holds a special place in the hearts and memories of generations of Germans from what are referred to as “the new states” in the former East.

This essay explores Volkov’s Emerald City within the ideological and political context of the East German reading marketplace. The publishing history of the series and the enduring popularity of its characters and message show the fundamentally cross-cultural appeal of Baum’s original Wizard of Oz fairy tale story. Baum’s tale, in his own words, “aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares left out” (Baum, “Introduction”) and the familiarity and malleability of the wonder tale form provided Volkov with an excellent template for a wizard story for readers in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries.

Steinmetz’s translation of The Wizard of the Emerald City into German coincided with the year of the German Democratic Republic’s founding and the book’s position in the history of children’s literature in the GDR demonstrates the politicization of the literary and publishing establishment in the Soviet satellite country. During the era of “denazification” in the Allied occupied zones of the Federal Republic of Germany, the USSR was engaged in its own reeducation projects in the GDR. In order to educate a new generation of socialist citizens, the ruling Socialist Unity Party denigrated much of German literary history on the basis of its...