Even 80 years after the end of the Nazi regime, memories of National Socialism remain a central theme in sociopolitical discourse as well as in the field of children’s and young adult literature. This is evidenced by the numerous debates in the public sphere and in scholarly discourse that focus on the questions: What do we remember about the Nazi era, and how do we remember it? These questions are relevant against the backdrop of a dwindling number of eyewitnesses and are increasingly directing attention (among other things) to literature, which, as a medium of cultural memory (Assmann 1998, Erll 2008), contributes to remembrance through its topoi and narratives. Important topoi and narratives include, for example, resistance, persecution, flight and expulsion, war, and everyday life.

A look back at (literary) history shows that, of the vast number of picture books, children’s books, and young adult books ever published, only a small fraction currently circulates in cultural memory. Much of this children’s and young adult literature has fallen into oblivion. This is due, on the one hand, to the fact that studies of literary history typically cite those literary works that, from today’s perspective, corresponded to the social discourse on memory at the time. On the other hand, it should be noted that older children’s and young adult literature is often given too little attention, and that East German literature in this genre is usually considered a marginal phenomenon—a fact that scholars of children’s and young adult literature have lamented since the 1990s (see Hopster 1992, Hurrelmann 1992, Ewers 2006, Schmideler 2021). Consequently, the perspective on children’s and young adult literature dealing with National Socialism is also one-sided, apart from a few attempts that either seek to define the field at all (or at least in part) or focus on individual aspects such as resistance, flight, expulsion, the Holocaust, or war—aside from the many didactic treatises in book and essay form, primarily intended for use in German and history classes. A well-founded, interdisciplinary examination of children’s and young adult literature that addresses the various facets of National Socialism (exile, war, flight, persecution of Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and many others) from a holistic perspective—is still lacking, as is consideration of the systems of action that emerged in parallel with the discourses of remembrance (publishers, literary criticism, schools, etc.) and of international children’s and young adult literature, which has contributed to the memory of National Socialism since 1945. As early as the 2000s, Levy and Sznaider (2001) emphasized that memories of National Socialism are cosmopolitan. It is therefore necessary to approach the topic from a comparative, historical, and theoretically grounded perspective. This also means taking the following aspects into account:

1. socio-historical aspects: how children’s and young adult novels take up or even drive extraliterary debates about the Nazi era;

2. aspects inherent to the works themselves or structuralist aspects that provide insight into how, in children’s and young adult literature, conceptions of the Nazi era are constructed at the textual and visual levels—conceptions that continue to be drawn upon in cultures of remembrance to this day;

3. Discourse-analytical aspects: how children’s and young adult literature feeds its representations of the Nazi era into the social knowledge system;

4. psychoanalytic aspects, such as how survivors and subsequent generations process their traumas related to the Nazi era and (post-)exile through writing;

5. Aspects of the history of mentalities, such as how children’s and young adult book authors address their own and others’ experiences of the Nazi era as an expression of society’s mental and cultural disposition.

6. Gender-theoretical aspects, such as how images of girls and boys are shaped in relation to or in contrast to the discourse on child-rearing.

The Live Handbook, to be published by J. B. Metzler, addresses these objectives. The plan is to publish articles successively, initially as open access, before a printed handbook is released in parallel. In addition, a database containing a wealth of primary texts will be made available, which can be updated and expanded later. The aim is to publish a handbook that serves as a reference work on children’s and young adult literature about National Socialism, one that can be used for research, academic study, and in schools.

Structure

1. Discourses on Remembering National Socialism

2. Genres

3. Genres – Themes – Characters

4. Film – Audiobook – Video Game – Apps

5. Authors

6. Illustrations

7. Publishers

8. Libraries and Memorial Sites

9. Awards and Recommendations

10. International Children’s and Young Adult Literature

11. Perspectives on Education Policy

The handbook is edited by Prof. (ret.) Dr. Petra Josting (Bielefeld University), Dr. Jana Mikota ( University of Siegen), and Dr. Larissa Carolin Jagdschian (Duisburg-Essen University).