ERIC Number: EJ1299699
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Jun
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-2043-6106
EISSN: N/A
German Children's Art during World War I
Global Studies of Childhood, v11 n2 p195-212 Jun 2021
My article considers German wartime propaganda and pedagogy from 1914 to 1916, which influenced young schoolchildren (aged 5-14) to create drawings and paintings of Germany's military in World War I. In this art, the children drew bodies of German soldiers as tough, heroic, on the move, armed with powerful weapons, and part of a superior military movement; their enemies (French, Russian, British soldiers) embodied disorder, backwardness, ineptitude, and deadly weakness. The artwork by these schoolchildren thus reveals the intense propaganda of the war years, and the children's tendency to see the German military as the most accomplished combatant in the war. During the first two years of the war, in the primary schools of the nation, many children did such art under the supervision of teachers who passionately embraced the nation and the war cause. Within the classroom, teachers directed students to imagine the war by drawing scenes of battles, including the sinking of the Lusitania. Some of these teachers had been influenced by the Kunsterziehungsbewegung (the arts' education movement) and thus encouraged children's creativity in art of the war years. In this pedagogical wartime environment the young student became actively engaged in creative learning and study about the war, expressing romantic ideas of the indomitable German soldier and sailor. My research has involved analysis of over 250 school drawings done by children aged 10-14 in a school in Wilhelmsburg, near Hamburg, in 1915. I analyze the depiction of the German forces in six of these sources and also consider the history of art instruction in German schools. Furthermore, I address the ways in which historians can analyze children's art as a historical document for understanding the child's experience.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, War, Freehand Drawing, Painting (Visual Arts), Military Personnel, Art Products, Propaganda, Creativity, Preadolescents, Early Adolescents, Educational History, Art Education, Experience
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A