Searcher of possibilities

In 1911 the painter Adele Sandler (1873 Karlsruhe–1946 Jerusalem) published what is probably the first German-Jewish picture book – and a long-standing desideratum – through the Jüdischer Volksschriften-Verlag. It is striking how clearly the 18 illustrated plates reflect the constant interchange between German and Jewish culture. They guide the beholder through the Jewish festival calendar and seasons, through city and countryside, and into both bourgeois settings and ethnic traditions. The work bears the simple title “Bilderbuch” (picture book); only the paratext promises “pictures, verses and more, much of which is Jewish”.

In 1920 the title was included in the repertoire of the recently established publishing house Welt-Verlag, which played a significant role during the Weimar Republic in shaping an understanding of Jewish art and culture. The title has now been changed to “Das Jüdische Bilderbuch” (The Jewish Picture Book) and the number of plates has been reduced to the ten which focused on Jewish festival culture. This is a reflection of the changing Zeitgeist and the concious emphasis being placed on Jewish education.

In 1925 the work was published by BIAS-Verlag under the same title, “Das jüdische Bilderbuch”, but once more featuring the original 18 illustrated plates. Text and illustrations are now separated, with the plates only partially coloured in order to encourage children to use their imagination and colour in the plates themselves. This reprint of the book was available either as a bound edition or as loose sheets on sturdy cardboard.

In spite of the range and number of these modifications, the 1920 and 1925 editions did not attract nearly as much attention from the press as the first edition, though there was no shortage of imitations. As late as 1930 Adele Sandler's work was still being described as “lovely but somewhat neutral and colourless”, and this too reflects the shifting cultural climate.

Bibles for children – with simplified language and suitably adapted content – had been available as early as the beginning of the 19th century. However, by the end of the century many Jewish children were estranged from their faith or even completely unfamiliar with it; media created especially for Jewish children were seen as a way of helping this audience to discover their Jewish roots. Commissions were established to promote German-Jewish children's literature, and competitions were devised specifically with popular genres in mind. This gave rise to works such as the “Sammlung preisgekrönter Märchen und Sagen” (Collection of Award-Winning Fairy-tales and Legends) in 1909 and “Tams Reisen durch die jüdische Märchenwelt” (Tam's Journey Through the World of Jewish Fairy-tales) in 1922.

Quality could essentially be judged by the extent to which the design was child-friendly: In addition to the use of appropriate language, new genres and media formats also played a role – above all the use of illustrations. The aim was to encourage processes which would connect with the daily life of Jewish children and stimulate a sense of Jewish identity. A highly regarded contemporary work incorporating these aspects was “Der Jüdischer Kinderkalendar” (The Jewish Children's Calendar) by the educator and rabbi Dr Emil Bernhard Cohn (1881 Steglitz–1948 Los Angeles), published in 1927 by the Jüdischer Verlag in Berlin.

In 1898, Theodor Herzl claimed that Zionism meant returning home to Judaism before returning to Judaism's own homeland. He went on to define two components of the Zionist movement: the cultural aspect, aiming to “give Jews inner security” (Kurt Blumenfeld), and the political aspect, according to which Zionism envisions “the creation of an officially and legally recognised home in Palestine for those Jews who cannot, or who do not wish to, assimilate elsewhere.” (Basler Programm 1897). Well into the Weimar Republic era, Zionism remained the subject of considerable controversy within German-Jewish circles. The Jewish National Fund (Keren Kajemeth LeIsrael, KKL) and the organisation Keren Hajessod (KH) mobilised Zionists all over the world, and collected donations in order to acquire and cultivate land in Palestine.

In 1925 KKL launched an innovative initiative: The idea was to enable the younger children to understand the significance of land acquisition and settlement in Eretz Israel. The artist Annie Rosenblüth (1890 Berlin–1966 Kidlington Oxford) created the first children's game for KKL, Palestine Domino, a set of 32 topics illustrating what could be achieved with the donations collected by KKL and KH. Along with other smaller items such as a Kibbutz Merchavia cut-out sheet, the game was first presented at the1925 Zionist Congress in Vienna, where it was well received. The rules of the game are printed in four languages: Hebrew, German, English, and French. The initial print-run was set at 10,000 games over three years. However sales proved difficult as the KKL lacked the necessary distribution infrastructure.
From 1924 onward, and in addition to the games, there were also fairy-tale booklets with references to Palestine, mostly written by Irma Miriam Singer, who was already known to the German public for her collection of Jewish fairy tales “Das verschlossene Buch” (The Sealed Book), published in 1915. In 1936, she followed this with a Zionist adventure story “Benni fliegt ins gelobte Land” (Benni Flies to the Promised Land). KKl emphasised that it was not seeking to impose any particular “bias”. Nevertheless, it was still keen to convey the organisation's goals, such as the “redemption of the homeland soil”.

Rabbis and educators had been discussing the potential of art in Jewish education as early as the turn of the century. In 1910 there had already been a proposal to create a Jewish picture book. In the 1920s the benefits of play and imagery had been explored in various educational supplements to the orthodox journal “Der Israelit”, emphasizing how important it was to show Jewish children pictures of situations they were no longer likely to experience at home. For those still receiving a religious education it was also a way to reinforce and enrich what they had already learnt.

Play, in particular, could be used to encourage religious activity. A prime example of this is the construction of a sukkah, a traditional temporary shelter topped with branches, traditionally associated with the festival of Sukkot and commemorating the journey through the wilderness following the exodus from Egypt. The sukkah symbolises the divine protection once extended to the Israelites on their journey and also warns of the vulnerability faced by those who live without God. In addition to its obvious religious significance, there is also a practical dimension to the game, since in urban environments there is often insufficient space to build a sukkah. In such cases the miniature sukkah could serve to some extent as a substitute. The 1927 wooden sukkah from Jenny Westheim's arts and crafts workshop in Frankfurt am Main is probably the first example of a wooden construction set designed for Jewish children.

Jewish arts and crafts were mainly engaged in the production of ritual objects: Hanukkah lamps, mezuzot (doorpost house blessings), Seder napkins and pouches, and other more practical items like thermos flasks for Shabbat evenings. The challenge lay in finding a new design language capable of incorporating components of modern form while retaining links to traditional elements.

From the early 1920s onwards, arts and craft workshops had already offered children's games. These combined practicality with aesthetic quality, since games were supposed to introduce children to the Jewish festivals while also maintaining a high artistic standard.

Among the leading arts and crafts workshops was that of Rosa Freudenthal (1870 Breslau–1951 Haifa). In collaboration with a number of other artists she developed a whole range of games, such as a cardboard sukkah assembly kit (1921), a children's Hebrew printing set, a Hanukkah game (1922), a Hebrew lottery game (1925), and a Hebrew foursome card game (1932). Rosa Freudenthal presented her games at educational conferences or Zionist congresses; they were extremely well-received by the press, as documented by many traditional, liberal and Zionist journals and community newsletters. Even the celebrated rabbi and scholar Ismar Elbogen recounted how his children played with the sukkah and the Hebrew printing set produced by Freudenthal's arts and crafts workshop.

The importance of children's play was particularly promoted by progressive educators, whose ideas also resonated within Jewish circles. As a result, children's games were included in the listings of Jewish publishers (such as Brandeis, Jüdischer Verlag) or Jewish organisations (such as Agudas Israel, KK). They were recommended as gifts for Jewish festivals, used in Jewish classroom teaching, and adopted by groups and youth movements. Bookshops and exhibitions also spotlighted these items, enabling them to reach smaller communities, mostly under the heading “Das jüdische Buch” (The Jewish Book), as part of a wider cultural programme.

Jewish life as experienced at home by many families around the turn of the century had become so superficial that children had hardly been able to form any deep cultural roots. The sociologist Zygmunt Baumann wrote that it had simply been “reduced to a ritual and stripped of any emotional content”. As a consequence, the newly evolving German-Jewish children's media were aimed at families as the main socialising force. Advertising targeted parents, appearing particularly often in magazines published around festivals and holidays. On the other hand, the children's supplements which had started to appear from the mid-1920s onwards addressed their young readers directly and recognised them as a target group in their own right.

Publications such as “Wegweiser durch die Jugendliteratur” (1905-1914), “Freie jüdische Lehrerstimme” (1912-1920 or “Die jüdische Schulzeitung” (1925-1938) regularly reviewed new titles, and in some cases recommended them for use in the classroom. As the political situation became more precarious, the education process focused increasingly on fostering an awareness of the need for future security.

Youth movements played a crucial role in the socialisation of Jewish children and young people. The Jewish hiking and cultural movement Blau-Weiß was founded in 1913. By 1924, 15 youth organisations had been established, with a total of 40,000 members. By the end of the 1930s, almost all young Jewish people were involved in one or other of these movements, which were responsible for almost a third of all print titles for Jewish children and young people during that decade. These publications also contained advertisements for Jewish children's media; they contained lists of suggested Hanukkah gifts and were even able to offer price reductions.

The effort to create child-friendly content made Jewish media more colourful. This is particularly striking in the context of the Jewish Bible, as rabbinic tradition regards the Torah as the literal transmission of the word of God, rendering it sacred and immutable. However, as early as the Jewish enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohn had already broken the rule prescribing Hebrew as the only permitted text form, thereby making the content more accessible for all, including children. In the 1920s and 1930s biblical material was again more freely adapted for children and brought closer to secular concepts.

Cheskel Zwi Kloetzel transposed the biblical story of Moses into a contemporary adventure novel about a Jewish boy who finds himself abandoned on a steamship bound for the United States. The “Biblische Puppenspiele” (Biblical Puppet Plays) by Käte Baer-Freyer and Albert Baer transform biblical stories into dramatic scenes for children, with striking illustrations by Käte Baer-Freyer. She also created figurines which could be purchased together with the book, encouraging children to recreate the scenes themselves. Otto Geismar produced an illustrated Bible, and with considerable pedagogical skill he reduced the complexity of the deeply symbolic pictures to a few simply strokes. This often then encouraged the children to colour them in. The Bible adaptation produced by the liberal rabbi Joachim Prinz draws heavily on the Midrash, the traditional oral version of the Torah. This allowed the rabbi more flexibility with the text, which subsequently takes on the character of an adventure story, brought to life by Heinz Wallenberg's numerous illustrations. A particularly unusual example is “The Child's Haggadah”, with moving images activated by pulling a tab, vividly illustrating how the Red Sea parted for Moses and the Jewish people.

The Weimar era led to the flourishing of Hebrew culture in Berlin. Leading Hebraists, dedicated to developing a modern spoken Hebrew language, gathered here and founded Hebrew publishing houses such as Dwir, Eschkol, Klal or Omanuth. Omanuth also published Hebrew picture books for children, though these probably only reached a fairly small number of German-Jewish children. Most Jewish children brought up in liberal households only had a few hours of religious instruction dedicated to the study of Hebrew, with little connection to the language in their daily lives. Teaching Hebrew to children as a spoken language through play thus became one of Jewish education's most important goals.

Hebrew card games, such as העיר (The City), published in 1918, appeared early on. Even more important were Hebrew primers, which seemingly appeared in unlimited quantities and artistic forms. However, press reviews showed that ambitious Hebrew projects were generally considered too difficult. As a result, there was a growing demand for translations. Otto Geismar's “Megilat Esther” (1926), which was published as a scroll featuring Hebrew typography and matching dynamic illustrations by Dr Herbert Loewenstein Verlag in Berlin, was followed merely a year later by a further edition (Robert Alter Verlag, Berlin), which included a German translation alongside the original Hebrew text.