Late 18th - Christina Cherry

The last third of the 18th century, the period of late enlightenment, may be regarded as the epochal turning point that separates early and modern children’s literature – primarily children’s literature will be dealt with below. The (European) Enlightenment, in its initial and middle phases, adheres to the traditional characterization of children’s and young people’s literature as socialization literature, and the aspiring bourgeoisie, who is strictly utilitarian in terms of education, prefers to use the traditional, doctrinal forms of literature that are only available in the aligns its own set of values. Nevertheless, John Lockes, for example, appears influential Some thoughts concentrating education from 1693 on the demand for a certain child conformity of the literature intended for the child; Locke demands "light, enjoyable books that are appropriate to his abilities", and most appropriately holds Aesop’s fables. The adjustments to the special nature of the child envisaged here are of course limited to the forms of presentation, the way in which knowledge is conveyed, which should be playful and descriptive (by means of reinforced narrative clothing).

In the course of the 18th century, educational intelligence became the engine of a change in consciousness, which was called the "Discovery of childhood" referred to and that in Jean Jacques Rousseaus Emile ou sur l’éducation from 1762 found its outstanding manifesto.

Rousseau’s revolutionary philosophy of childhood was already adopted in the 1970s by the German educational writers, the so-called philanthropists, and made it the starting point for a drastic reform of children’s literature. This reform is based on Rousseau’s view that childhood is a qualitatively independent form of human existence, from which the completely different world of adults is seen as something completely incomprehensible. Equipping children with knowledge about this world is a senseless undertaking; it would only result in empty word knowledge. For the children’s literature, this results in an almost complete exchange of topics and content: from now on, it has to concentrate on the representation of children’s living environments. "Why the child a lesson that only concerns adults?", Joachim Heinrich Campe asks in 1779 and demands that children’s literature should not only look at the "comprehension", but also according to the current "moral needs of the child" have to judge.
The thematic focus on children’s living environments, proclaimed here for the first time in terms of meaning, turns out to be one of the central characteristics of modern children’s literature in historical review. For the children’s literature, it brings a boost to independence and isolation. In pre-philanthropic times it was more of a general beginner’s literature; The frequent addressing to very different circles of uneducated people or shifts was characteristic of this. With the stipulation that now primarily dealing with children and their current experiences, children’s literature becomes a beginner’s literature aimed exclusively at children. As much as this results in a thoroughly beneficial clearing out of the material – in the age of encyclopaedic the educational ballast in the children’s books was overwhelming – it also means a thematic impoverishment of this branch of literature. One later blames this impoverishment on the philanthropic children’s literature reformers, the supposed inventors of the so-called later "specific children’s literature", attributed to impoverishment itself merely as an outflow of wrong ideas and thus seen as principally avoidable. From today’s perspective, this presents itself more as a reflex of an objective social change, the increasing independence and separation of the real child’s living space, which are to be regarded as part of the comprehensive social modernization process. Under this premise, the philanthropic children’s literature reform can be described as a cultural modernization. Such differentiations of social areas generally go hand in hand with a limitation of the horizon of experience, the possibilities of participation in social life.
Childhood is Rousseau about that beyond as a mode of existence that is only by itself, d. H. can be understood and assessed from the child’s point of view. The consequence of this is that there can be no legitimate authority over the child on the adult side; any direct, any authoritarian upbringing is to be regarded as a failure. With regard to children’s literature, this not only requires a limitation to topics in the child’s world, but also the recognition of the child’s world as a completely autonomous area of existence. A modern children’s literature reformed in Rousseau’s spirit should therefore also be anti-authoritarian children’s literature. In the traditional view of children’s literary communication, the child recipient does not appear to be more respectable as a vehicle own Values and tastes; In this view, children’s literature serves rather to transmit and implant norms, which are always guidelines from adults. From the Rousseauist point of view, traditional children’s literature would have to be qualified as authoritarian. An anti-authoritarian children’s literature, on the other hand, would have to address child experiences and living environments in their independence from the expectations and values of the adult world, in special cases even in open confrontation with them. It could no longer serve the purpose that has traditionally been considered fundamental to all children’s literature – that of conveying the standards of civilization, the rules of conduct and moral values that are valid in the adult world. In the anti-authoritarian children’s literature, it is important to express the child’s state of mind, the child’s feeling, experience and perception as unobtrusively as possible – regardless of how one-sided and "not correct", how questionable and problematic this subjectivity of the child may appear in the eyes of adults or society.

As much as the idea of a reformed, modern children’s literature of childhood autonomy is already palpable in the early stages of social modernization in Germany, the process of its implementation and implementation is lengthy and jagged. A large number of repeated efforts to reform the children’s literature, which are basically the same in principle, are required before the modern, the middle of the 20th century "new" Children’s literature meets with broader social acceptance and becomes the dominant direction. The two basic ideas of the reform of children’s literature prevail in very different ways. The increasing differentiation of childhood and family inner space in the upper, then also in the middle bourgeoisie brought about a connection in the late 18th, early 19th century of a growing part of children’s literature to the limited child’s horizon of experience. Increasingly, in the modern children’s books of this time, a child’s world of life that has been removed from social life and shielded from external influences is encountered. Adult authority figures who, as fathers, mothers, (house) teachers, governesses, etc., belong to the separated world of children still have the say in this. The latter is understood here as a living space set up and supervised by educational authorities, as an educational province.

In Joachim Heinrich Campes Robinson the Younger (1779/80) the connection of children’s literature to the child’s horizon of experience is realized in an exemplary and at the same time spectacular way.

It is no longer an adaptation, but a travesty: the strange adventures of a man are transformed into a youth story. The narrative round of the framework plot with the father as narrator and moral authority may be considered a model case of a pedagogical province in the sense of late enlightenment. Before that would have Johann Gottlieb Schummel in Children’s games and talks (1776-78) determined this province as one of the educational, useful game. The same applies to the children’s world, as described in the framework of Christian Felix Weißes children’s magazine The child friend (1776-82); Here, too, social and drama plays an outstanding role (published separately in 1792). In Christian Gotthilf Salzmann’s narrative Moral Elementary Book (1782), on the other hand, the father and his children sometimes visit social settings outside of the child’s or family’s inner space. The thematic limitation of children’s literature to childhood and its horizon of experience also comes up against reservations. As a counterpart to Campe’s Robinson travesty, Johann Karl Wezel thought his for the youth Robinson Krusoe (also 1779/80) designed that remains a story of adults and extends thematically far beyond the horizon of young readers. In general, children’s literature in Germany has remained divided since the philanthropic reform: A significant part insists that characters of any age are suitable as role models and offers instead of "new" Children’s stories continue moral narratives of men and women of impeccable change. This applies in particular to the Catholic children’s literature of southern Germany until the 20th century, which in Christoph von Schmid (Genevieve, 1810; The Ostereyer, 1812; Rosa von Tannenburg, 1823 u. a.) has its most significant representative.

Taking the other basic idea of modern children’s literature reform to heart would mean viewing the independent child’s living space as a realm of childish freedom, respecting it as a free space conquered by the children themselves. The adult would still have access now – but no longer as an authority figure. The philanthropists Rousseau refused to follow the authority question, and so the children’s literature they initiated lacked the anti-authoritarian element. Nevertheless, the late 18th century saw the first anti-authoritarian children’s book in German. We are talking about a largely forgotten collection of poems for children – only the song set by Mozart "Come on, dear May, and make the trees green again" has held – which in 1781 under the title Fritzchen’s songs has been published, and its author, Christian Adolf Overbeck, temporarily joined the poet group of the "Göttingen grove" counted. The short preface can be seen as the first German manifesto of anti-authoritarian children’s literature. The author announces with some self-confidence, "that these are the first children’s songs among us", after, it has to be added, there have so far only been lyrical texts for children formulated from an adult point of view. The core sentence then follows: "If I have done well, this is really a child." Fritzchen is anything but a child’s role model that could be emulated: "My Fritzchen – it would be better if he could have been an angel: but he is a human child. As much as some readers may once like to win it, I have to tell the reader that it is not ideal for the little ones."

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