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In this innovative analysis of German elementary education, Katharine Kennedy uses textbooks, curricula, and pedagogical texts to trace continuities and changes in the lessons taught in the elementary schools of Wilhelmine, Weimar, and Nazi Germany. Children in all three periods were exposed to recurring texts that reinforced attachment to God, region, and fatherland. However, they also encountered evolving symbols of the nation and shifting ideas about the identity of Germany and the German people. By blending lessons on Hitler, race, and heredity with traditional narratives, Nazi education conveyed its ideology under the cloak of virtue, patriotism, and normality. It provides a compelling example of how a dictatorship manipulates religion and tradition to legitimize a brutal, lawless, and racist regime.
“This is an excellent book with a wide-ranging and ambitious scope, covering education in three key periods of modern German history: Wilhelmine Germany, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Kennedy presents a careful analysis of schooling in each of these three eras. Examining textbooks and curricula, Kennedy provides an important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the history of education in Germany, between 1890 and 1945.” • Lisa Pine, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Katharine Kennedy is the Charles A. Dana Professor Emerita of History at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia. A specialist on the history of German education, her publications encompass the Imperial, Weimar, and Nazi periods and address themes such as religion, colonialism, regionalism, and music. Her recent publications include the article “Singing about Soldiers in German Schools, from 1890 to 1945” (Paedagogica Historica 2016) and the chapter, “‘German Youth, Your Leader!’: How National Socialism Entered Elementary Schools in 1933”, in From Weimar to Hitler: Studies in the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic and the Establishment of the Third Reich, 1932–1934 (Berghahn Books 2019).
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Part I: Schooling in Wilhelmine Germany
Chapter 1. Schools and Schoolbooks in Wilhelmine Germany
Chapter 2. Religious Education in German Schools
Chapter 3. Community: Ordinary Stories and Moral Obligation
Chapter 4. Homeland, Fatherland, and Distant Lands: Spaces of Belonging
Chapter 5. Royal Representation of the Nation
Chapter 6. Lessons about War: Sacrifice and Nationhood in Wilhelmine Germany
Part II: Schooling in the Weimar Republic
Chapter 7. Schools and Schoolbooks in Weimar Germany
Chapter 8. Weimar-Era Religious Instruction: Continuity and Reform
Chapter 9. Lessons about Community in Weimar Schools: Strong-Armed Men and Dutiful Children
Chapter 10. Where is the German’s Fatherland? Within and beyond the Weimar Borders
Chapter 11. Representing the Republic: The Limits of Civic Education
Chapter 12. Lessons about War: Mourning and Victimhood in Weimar Germany
Part III: Schooling under the Nazi Dictatorship
Chapter 13. Schools and Schoolbooks in Nazi Germany
Chapter 14. Christian Education in Nazi Schools
Chapter 15. Lessons about Community in the Racial State
Chapter 16. Lebensraum in the Classroom
Chapter 17. The Hitler Myth for Children
Chapter 18. Learning to Imagine War, Again
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index