Innovation und Ideologieverdacht

Zusammenfassung

By drawing on a wide range of sources and by placing individual works both in their own historical contexts and in the history of the genre as a whole, it is the aim of the present study to broaden and disseminate knowledge about children’s and young adult literature published in Austria in the 1930s and 1940s. Interpretations of literary works written for children in the period under consideration often ignore the dual „threat scenario“ presented by the Austrian authoritarian „Ständestaat“ („corporate state“) and the neighbouring Nazi regime. The result is a hermeneutical problem: how to assess the political import of certain literary works written for children. This article puts this problem into perspective by using the term „humoresque“. Although some writers, such as Franz Karl Ginzkey, were fellow-travellers of both Nazi-Germany and the Austrian „Ständestaat“ – which was actually opposed to Nazi-Germany – numerous children’s books in no way reflect either ideology but can be read as humoresques. In analyses informed by critical ideology the question often arises as to whether actual or alleged ideologemes are to be traced back to authorial strategies of conformism, adopted as a necessity for sheer survival. These different approaches have helped to discern in some texts innovative generic approaches, which would have been blocked by blanket suspicion of conforming to Nazi dictatorship. It goes without saying that vestiges of fascist ideology can be detected in the children’s and young adult literature of the period, which above all need to be consistently identified in the post-war years. It is also important to consider whether an openly fascist and racist propaganda has, quite generally, played a part in the development of these genres. The fact of their existence under the dictatorship meant that the basically.