Cover not available
Part of
Photography in Children's Literature
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 17] 2023
► pp. 232–253

Chapter 10
Portrait of the child as a socialist

Three photographic picturebooks from the German Democratic Republic

This chapter focuses on portraits of children in three photographic picturebooks from the German Democratic Republic (GDR). While these picturebooks draw largely on modernist photography in the postwar period, they also react sensitively to ideological demands from the official state authorities. To demonstrate this influence, this chapter exemplifies that these photobooks represent different aesthetic and ideological strategies. While Bullermax (1964) by Edith Rimkus and Horst Beseler is an exemplar of a poetic strategy and Matti im Wald (Matti in the Forest, 1966) by the same couple represents a realistic strategy, Kleiner Bruder Staunemann (Little Brother Marveling Man, 1966) by Hans Hüttner and Lotti Ortner stands for a propagandistic strategy. The chapter analyzes the inherent socialist values of the three books by stressing the idea of the curious socialist child and the effects of montage.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Poetic strategy: Bullermax
  • Realistic strategy: Matti im Wald
  • Propagandistic strategy: Kleiner Bruder Staunemann
  • Socialist values: Learning and curiosity
  • Effects of montage
  • Conclusion: Portraying the child in East German photobooks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.17.10kum
References (29)
References
Primary sources
Beseler, Horst & Rimkus, Edith. 1958. Verliebt in Berlin. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben.Google Scholar
. 1964. Bullermax. Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag.Google Scholar
. 1966. Matti im Wald. Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag.Google Scholar
Hüttner, Hans & Ortner, Lotti. 1971. Kleiner Bruder Staunemann. Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag (first ed. 1966).Google Scholar
Kosing, Alfred et al. 1954. Weltall Erde Mensch. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben.Google Scholar
Lamorisse, Albert. 1957. Le ballon rouge. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Orgel-Köhne, Liselotte, Orgel-Köhne, Armin & Hildebrandt, Lu. 1965. Per und Ann leben in Schweden. Berlin: Erika Klopp.Google Scholar
Strittmatter, Erwin & Rimkus, Edith. 1954. Erntesommer. Dresden: Sachsenverlag.Google Scholar
Secondary sources
Ades, Dawn. 1988. Photomontage. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Andresen, Sabine. 2006. Sozialistische Kindheitskonzepte. Politische Einflüsse auf die Erziehung. München: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ansorg, Leonore. 1997. Kinder im Klassenkampf. Die Geschichte der Pionierorganisation von 1948 bis Ende der fünfziger Jahre. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bode, Andreas. 2006. Bilderbücher und Kinderbuchillustrationen. In Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. SBZ/DDR. Von 1945 bis 1990, Rüdiger Steinlein, Heidi Strobel & Thomas Kramer (eds), 830–902. Stuttgart: Metzler. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brock, Angela. 2009. Producing the “Socialist Personality”? Socialization, Education and the Emergence of New Patterns of Behaviour. In Power and Society in the GDR, 1961–1979: The Normalisation of Rule?, Mary Fulbrook (ed.), 220–252. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Dobrenko, Evgeny. 2011. Socialist Realism. In The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, Evgeny Dobrenko & Marina Balina (eds), 97–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Druker, Elina. 2011. To Mirror the Real: Ideology and Aesthetics in Photographic Picturebooks. In Beyond Pippi Longstocking: Intermedial and International Aspects of Astrid Lindgren’s Works, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer & Astrid Surmatz (eds), 173–183. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Erbe, Günter. 1993. Die verfemte Moderne. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem „Modernismus“ in Kulturpolitik, Literaturwissenschaft und Literatur der DDR. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.Google Scholar
Fehrenbach, Heide. 2014. Children and other civilians: Photography and the politics of humanitarian image-making. In Humanitarian Photography: A History, Heide Fehrenbach (ed), 165–199. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Higonnet, Anne. 1998. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
. 2013. Picturing Childhood in the Modern West. In The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World, Paula S. Fass (ed.), 296–312. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina & Meibauer, Jörg. 2021. How radical was children’s literature in the German Democratic Republic? Socialist children’s literature between radicalism and dogmatism. Children’s Literature 49: 23–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2022. Propaganda in Photographic Picturebooks of the German Democratic Republic. PhotoResearcher 38 (special issue: Photobooks as Propaganda, ed. José Neves), 26–41.Google Scholar
Mietzner, Ulrike. 2001. Kaleidoskop der Erinnerungen. Kindheit in Fotografien. In Kinder. Kindheit. Lebensgeschichte. Ein Handbuch, Imbke Behnken & Jürgen Zinnecker (eds), 725–740. Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyersche Verlagsbuchhandlung.Google Scholar
Mietzner, Ulrike & Pilarczyk, Ulrike. 1997. Der Blick des Fotografen. Pädagogische Perspektiven in der Fotografie. In Bilder als Quellen der Erziehungsgeschichte, Hanno Schmitt, Jörg Link & Frank Tosch (eds), 353–374. Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt.Google Scholar
Stanley, Jason. 2015. How Propaganda Works. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stierli, Martino. 2012. Photomontage in/as Spatial Representation. Photoresearcher 18: 32–43.Google Scholar
Thomson-Wohlgemuth, Gaby. 2009. Translation under State Control: Books for Young People in the German Democratic Republic. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wattenberg, Jane. 2018. Picturebooks and photography. In The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed), 302–314. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wiegand, Thomas. 2016. Bullermax. Katalog zur Ausstellung “Edith Rimkus: Bullermax”. Kassel: Kasseler Fotoforum.Google Scholar
Winkler, Martina (ed.). 2019. Children on Display: Children’s History, Socialism and Photography. Special issue of Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 67.1.Google Scholar