Walter A. Berendsohn: Review of Erika Mann's Zehn Millionen Kinder (1938)
Walter A. Berendsohn: Review of Erika Mann's Zehn Millionen Kinder (1938)
Mit mütterlicher Sorge schreibt sie von dem Schicksal der 10 Millionen deutschen Kinder.
[Full of motherly concern, she writes about the fate of the 10 million German children. (ed. trans.)]
Walter A. Berendsohn in his review of Erika Mann‘s Zehn Millionen Kinder
The exhibit is a review of Erika Mann’s political textbook Zehn Millionen Kinder. Die Erziehung der Jugend im Dritten Reich [Ten Million Children: The Education of Young People in the Third Reich], which was published by Querido in Amsterdam in 1938 and appeared in the U.S.A. in the same year under the title School for Barbarians: Education under the Nazis. The author of the review is the literary scholar Walter A. Berendsohn, who, because of his Jewish descent, was forced to flee from Nazi Germany, first to Denmark and later to Sweden. He composed the review under the title Mütterliche Sorgen [Maternal Cares] during his stay in Copenhagen.
Berendsohn highlights the wealth of material with which Erika Mann underpins her account of the changes in Germany and, above all, the threat to children posed by the regime in Nazi Germany. In his eyes, Erika Mann stands out as a responsible advocate for children and young people who warns readers urgently about the consequences of the National Socialist regime. The reviewer draws particular attention to the prologue and epilogue of the book, in which Erika Mann portrays individual examples of successful resistance and “critical humanity”.
(Author: Polina Bondarenko)
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