German Elementary Education from 1890 to 1945: Lessons about Religion, Home, and Fatherland

by Katharine Kennedy

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781836951285
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	09/01/2025
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

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).

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction

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

Editorial Reviews

“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

From the Publisher