Raising Citizens in the "Century of the Child": The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective

The creation of good citizens is the goal of most government-sponsored educational systems. Schumann (modern history, Georg-August-University, Gottingen) and his contributors take a comparative look at the formation of citizens in the home and the school through the twentieth century in the United States and German Central Europe. At the beginning both were patriarchal, emphasizing discipline and conformity with white, Christian boys being privileged. Essays look at the rise of the importance of maternal influence, the establishment of child-welfare measures and the battle between parents and the state for control over the content of education. The Scopes trial in the United States is seen as an example of the latter dispute, which still continues. In German lands, clearly the rise of the Nazi dictatorship with its determination to inculcate children to blind obedience can be seen as a cautionary warning against too much state control. Articles on post-war attitudes include a greater emphasis on fathers being less authoritarian and distant as well as mothers being less smothering. The essays demonstrate that similar trends motivated both regions. They also point out that the welfare of children and the needs of the state are intertwined and can be directed in ways that can cause great harm as well as produce good citizens. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dirk Schumann is a Professor of Modern History at Georg-August-University Gottingen. He was Deputy Director of the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., from 2002 to 2007 and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bielefeld. From 1999 to 2002 he taught as Visiting Professor at Emory University. He is the author of Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War (English edition, Berghahn Books, 2009) and has co-edited Life After Death (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Violence and Society after the First World War (fi rst issue of Journal of Modern European History, 2003), and Between Mass Death and Individual Loss: Th e Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (Berghahn Books, 2008).