Historians specializing in women's and children's issues often confront the problem of sources—very few can be found, or they have been destroyed because archivists have considered them not worthy of saving. Emily Bruce confronts this challenge and creates a fascinating window into lives of children of the German Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle class) as their world changed in the wake of Enlightenment-inspired reforms in education. Her study addresses a gap in the historical scholarship concerning how children absorbed these educational reforms. Countless books explore Enlightenment-era reformers and their ideas about how and what to teach children. The question arises: how did the children respond to these efforts? How did they participate in the changes that shepherded in the Modern World? Bruce describes this study as a melding of a cultural history of changing sentiments and a social history of children's lived experiences.
Bruce unpacks this topic by looking at literature addressed to children and, when possible, their reactions to it. She visited public archives and libraries across Germany for research as well as found sources from the children themselves in private archives. The book's five chapters consider children's periodical literature, fairy tales, geography textbooks, children's letters, and children's diaries. Bruce presents insights about all these genres to reinforce children's role in the development of a self-conscious Bildungsbürgertum in Germany.
Reading material for children in the wake of the Enlightenment included subscription periodicals. Their content aimed to teach representative class values, but in an entertaining fashion. The periodicals suggested a variety of activities directly related to the illustrations, music, and dramatic readings found in them, which were intended to facilitate character development. Children were to enjoy what they read but learn from it as well. Bruce shares two interesting observations: some pedagogues feared too much emphasis on reading because it was a solitary occupation. Moreover, many texts were developed especially for girls to train them to become selfless women.
Bruce's discussion of fairy tales highlights the Grimms' magnum opus, Kinder und Hausmärchen (KHM) and carries through the discussion of the moral cultivation of children. The KHM went through seventeen revisions between 1812 and 1857. Over the decades, the book's original purpose of cultural preservation morphed into one of moral instruction. The fairy tales themselves were edited for content not suitable for children. Bruce suggests these changes reflected the social reality of mid-nineteenth-century “Germany,” especially in its attempt to develop an ideal of how girls and women should behave in the family.
Geographical texts and their goals fall under scrutiny as well. What roles did race, religion, nationalism, politics, and imperialism play in these books? School geography texts in the early nineteenth century contained maps and illustrations and encouraged children to play geographical board games. Gender also enters this discussion, as special geography texts were published for girls’ schools, which taught about the past but eschewed military history. In her study of these books, Bruce found students’ marginalia, which indicated their engagement with the wider world. The “reading child” was expected to become the imagined explorer. The two-fold aim of these books involved endorsing European hegemony in the world and cultivating the concept of a united Germany.
The last two chapters examine children's writing, using their letters and diaries. Albeit not an exhaustive sample, Bruce has discovered some compelling sources. Why did nineteenth-century German children write letters? Their efforts recounted topics such as travel, health, religion, and the weather, often connected with specific family experiences. Children learned to write letters by reading how-to manuals and epistolatory novels. Bruce asserts that this experience helped them develop the values of the Bildungsbürgertum.
The six diaries Bruce examines reveal how children forged their identities. She maintains that diaries served two purposes: self-surveillance and self-formation. With respect to the former, children knew parents or tutors might read their diaries, so they wrote about how hard they worked on school assignments. They dissected their feelings about various personal events as well. In terms of self-formation, children's diaries contain evidence of editing, developing literary taste depending on books read, and cultivating social relationships, which might even include family conflict. They also reveal the writers’ maturation toward the values of their class.
This well-written and easy-to-read study makes a sound contribution to the historical scholarship about the nineteenth-century German family and childhood as well as educational practices often tied to gender. Scholars in the field will enjoy some of its details; moreover, anyone generally interested in this topic would find it interesting as well. The chapters discussing literature aimed at children offer useful insights about juvenile periodicals, the KHM, and geography texts’ content, which worked to develop appropriate social values in the German middle-class child. The most original contribution involves the children's sources, which provide access to how these youthful writers digested what their parents or tutors wanted them to learn and how they reacted to these experiences.
