AK - Other Genres

1997

AK -- Other Genres

97-1/2-062

Eymers Pseudonymen-Lexikon [Eymer's Pseudnym Dictionary]. Ed. Wilfrid Eymer. Bonn: Kirschbaum, 1997. xv, 627 p. ISBN 3-7812-1399-4: DM 86.00

The publisher's blurb observes that the Lexikon is "more than just an impressive fruit of scholarly industry," but this latter aspect should not be ignored. The Lexikon is the result of the author's many years of collecting and editing, and fortunately his son transformed the entire text into a database. The work lists approximately 18,000 authors of belles-lettres and non-fiction from German-speaking countries, including those writing in languages other than German, from the early modern period (including names used by members of German literary societies of the 17th and 18th centuries) to the present. Altogether these writers used some 27,000 pseudonyms. Part One indexes their real names in alphabetical order, with dates and places of birth and death, pseudonyms used, literary genre(s), as well as source citations from twenty current author (and other) dictionaries. Part Two serves as a pseudonym index to Part One.

Eymer clearly contains significantly more entries than does Weigand's Pseudonyme: ein Lexikon (2d ed., 1994) at about 10,000. Weigand covers only more recent literature, has less additional data, and contains numerous gaps. Eymer includes all these names missing from Weigand. Eymer also contains more pseudonyms than the ca. 17,00-entry older standard work by Holzmann and Bohatta, Deutsches Pseudonymen-Lexikon (Vienna, 1906). But there are differences in coverage. Under some entries examined, Eymer lists only half as many pseudonyms as Weigand. Holzmann/Bohatta also lists several pseudonyms not listed in Eymer, and there are also a few differences of spelling. In the future then, users may well reach first for Eymer, but the other two pseudonym dictionaries have unfortunately not yet been entirely superseded. [sh/ga]

97-1/2-063

Verbotene Druckschriften in Deutschland [Banned imprints in Germany]. Ed. Herbert Birett. Vaduz: Topos-Verlag, 1996. 28 cm.

Vol. 4: Polnische Druckschriften 1850–1932 = Druki polskie 1850–1932 [Polish imprints, 1850–1932] Ed. Ewa Skorupa.

A. Register = Indeksy [Indexes] xxviii, 499 p. ISBN 3-289-00674-3

B. Quellen = Zróda [Sources] vii, 558 p. ISBN 3-289-006074-3. SFr. 300 (for pts. A & B)

While temporarily skipping over volume three, Herbert Birett continues his detailed bibliographical treatment of censored and banned imprints in Germany. Volume 2 (Schmutz und Schund [Dirt and rubbish]) treated materials regardless of origin. Volume 4 (like Volume 1) concentrates on specific groups of imprints, namely works that the Prussian authorities considered to be capable of arousing seditious feelings among their Polish subjects. Not only literary works, e.g. Adam Mickiewicz's Ksiegi narodu polskiego (Books of the Polish nation), and religious writings—since then, as again recently, the Catholic Church played a decisive role in protecting the national consciousness—fall under this heading, but also calendars, leaflets, postcards (such as those with reproductions of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa) and even insignias, labels, ashtrays, and other objects with inscriptions or illustrations considered dangerous to public order.

Birett engaged a Polish specialist to handle the language barrier and to format the contents. The introduction and many texts in Part A are dual-language. Birett's computer handled the editing and the layout of Part A, which is the same as that for Volume 1. Part B contains the citation-ready entries in order by source: the mass of them come from only two, namely the sixth edition of the Verzeichnis der verbotenen nichtperiodischen polnischen Druckschriften . . . (Poznan, 1911) and the Deutsches Fahndungsblatt.

Part A consists of numerous indexes of which only the main headings—"Persons and Institutions," "Titles," "Places," "Reasons for Banning," and "Dates"—and not the numerous subsections, are presented. The biographical data on the authors (in German and in Polish) is relatively detailed, as indicated by the Polish biographical dictionaries consulted. The obvious attempt was made to gather the names of all named persons regardless of function under one of no fewer than eight sub-headings.

Guides to research on the situation of the Polish-speaking population of Prussia are found in neither part. If someone were to attempt to ascertain the status of research on this subject, Birett and Skorupa's bibliography has laid the groundwork well. For the majority of libraries, however, this book can be dispensed with—certainly in times of radical shrinkage in budgets. [sh/ga]

97-1/2-064

Katalog der historischen Ausstellung von Bilderbüchern und Illustrierten Jugendschriften: in der Kunsthalle; Deutsche Lehererversammlung, Hamburg, 1896 [Catalog of the historic exhibition of picture-books and illustrated children’s books in the gallery of the German Teachers' Assembly, Hamburg, 1896]. Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung, 1996. x, 95 p. 21 cm. (Quellentexte aus der Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung, 3) ISBN 3-88494-182-8: DM 5.00

This reprint of an exhibition catalog provides a retrospective look at the state of collecting and preserving German children's literature at the end of the previous century. The creators of the 1896 exhibition gathered materials from forty of the most important European libraries and print collections, as well as from 200 German and foreign antiquarian book dealers, bookstores, and publishers. Based on these efforts, they concluded publicly that no library was systematically collecting children's literature and almost no publisher kept archival copies of the books he produced. The exhibitors' calls for help in preserving these materials were heeded at least by the Royal Library in Berlin, which had lent 20% of the exhibit's older titles and which thereafter collected significant older children's books retrospectively.

The catalog, with around 1100 titles of illustrated German folk literature and books for children and young people, presents a representative cross-section from four centuries. It indexes in addition some 200 French, English, Italian, and Japanese picture books. The bibliographic format is unsatisfactory: forenames are abbreviated, publication years are not established, and although the ongoing subject is picture books, and the illustrator is not named. The lender is, however, always named. The producers could not locate some fifty of the titles listed. Even so, the catalog offers a historic inventory of old children's books. [Heinz Wegehaupt/ga]

97-1/2-065

Wie das Kind sein soll: Kinderbücher als Quelle bildungsgeschichtlicher Forschung; Katalog zur Ausstellung der Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung des Deutschen Instituts für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung und der Kinder- und Jugendbuchabteilung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz vom 10. September bis 8. November 1996 [How a Child Should Be: Children's Books as a Source for Research in the History of Education; Catalog of an Exhibit by the German Institute for International Education Research . . .] Compiler: Christa Förster. Berlin: Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung, 1996. 32 p. 21 cm. ISBN 3-88494-1 84-4: DM 7.00

The libraries founded by teachers' organizations in Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, and Hamburg at the end of the last century were the first to actively collect children's and youth books for educational purposes. This is described in a small, well illustrated exhibition catalog of the Library for Research into the History of Education, which emerged in 1992 from the Central Education Library of the GDR (Pädagogische Zentralbibliothek der DDR), founded in 1951, which itself was formerly the German Teachers’ Library (Deutsche Lehrerbücherei) in Berlin.

In addition to three essays (especially recommended is then-director Marion Bierwagen's contribution on the Deutsche Lehrerbücherei), the catalog indexes 135 titles, half of them borrowed from the Children's and Youth Books Section of State Library of Prussian Cultural Property in Berlin. Unfortunately, no figures are given as to how large their collection is. [Heinz Wegehaupt/ga]

97-1/2-066

Lexikon der österreichischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur [Dictionary of Austrian Children's Literature]. Ed. Karin Sollat and Franz Lettner for the Internationales Institut für Jugendliteratur und Leseforschung. Wien: Buchkultur-Verlagsgesellschaft. 26 cm. ISBN 3-901052-17-8: ÖS 480.00, DM 68.00. (Buchkultur-Verlagsgesellschaft, Währinger Str. 104, A-1180 Wien)

Vol. 1. Autoren und Übersetzer [Authors and translators]. 1994. 105 p., ill.

Vol. 2. Illustratoren [Illustrators]. 1994. 112 p., ill.

Austrian writers and illustrators are responsible for a considerable portion of German-language children's books, a fact easily overlooked since so many Austrians publish their works in Germany, or their nominally Austrian publishers have addresses in all three major German-speaking countries. Now the Austrian Institute for Children's Literature and Reading Research in Vienna has provided us with the means to orient ourselves regardless of these confusing publishing circumstances. Volume 1 offers brief biographical and-often too brief-bibliographical information on 228 authors and illustrators who are Austrian citizens or non-Austrians who live in Austria and whose oeuvre is integrated into the Austrian scene. Volume 2 offers much the same information on 140 illustrators, whereby full-color specimens of these artists' work transform this volume into a wonderful catalog, evidence of the high level of Austrian children's book illustration. Photographs of authors and translators are included in volume 1, but omitted for the illustrator volume. Each article includes a brief English-language summary. The Lexikon describes itself as an "up-to-date, revised, and significantly expanded" version of Österreichische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Horn: Berger, 1987), and indeed, its coverage is almost double that of its predecessor.

As a comparison with this earlier work reveals, the weaknesses of new Lexikon reside in the realm of bibliographic information. Authors' works lists are often highly selective, and basic editorial and publication information-name of publisher, year of first publication, copies printed, even subtitles-has been omitted. Only the publication date of the "current paperback edition" is given. Published criticism has also been largely overlooked.

The work is nonetheless a valuable biographical guide. Indeed, one could wish for similar coverage for all children's writers and illustrators in German-speaking Europe. [hw/jg]

97-1/2-067

Kinder- und Jugendbücher, Kinder- und Jugendmedien: Auswahlbibliographie der Buchpublikationen [Children's Books, Children's Media: A Selective Bibliography of Monographs]. Ed. Jörg Diekneite and Juliane Eckhardt. Frankfurt am Main [et al.]: Lang, 1997. 207 p. 21 cm. (Studien zur Germanistik und Anglistik, 13). ISBN 3-631-30242-8: DM 48.00

Juliane Eckhardt, whose earlier survey of the research on children's literature, Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Darmstadt, 1987), was the object of some controversy, has joined now with Jörg Diekneite to create this new work, the result of a project conducted at the University of Paderborn in Germany. As the title reveals, not only children's reading material, but also the so-called "new media" fall within the scope of this bibliography. Content parameters have been expanded to include research not only within the traditional areas of literary criticism and pedagogy, but also sociological and psychological discussions of children's aesthetic perception and the very broad field of popular ("trivial") reading material, even where this deals with a genre usually read by adults. Only monographs are covered by this bibliography (roughly 2000 titles), beginning with those published in the 1990s through mid-1996, primarily works in German or translated from other languages into German.

The work's disclaimer that it "consciously does not strive for bibliographical comprehensiveness" unfortunately does not suffice to excuse numerous major omissions. The authors treated under the caption "popular reading" may include important writers for adults, e.g. Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon, but not the popular heroes of children of the 1990s. As for general works in this same area, Kosch and Nagl's essential bibliography Kolportageroman (Stuttgart, 1993) is not listed. Major journals have been overlooked among the 50 selected, and even works of the stature of Theodor Brüggemann's Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: Von 1570 bis 1750 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991) are not represented.

All in all, researchers are better advised to turn to other resources: Karl Ernst Maier's Sekundärliteratur zur Kinder- und Jugendbuchtheorie (Baltmannsweiler: Schneider, 1979), Heinz Wegehaupt's Bibliographie theoretischer Arbeiten zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (Würzburg: Könighausen u. Neumann, 1995), and the new annual, Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung published by the Institute for Children's Book Research at the University of Frankfurt. These bibliographic works also include the valuable non-monographic material definitionally excluded by the volume under review. [Maria Michels-Kohlhage/jg]

97-1/2-068

Bibliographie wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten zur Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung in Österreich [Bibliography of Published Research on Children's Literature in Austria]. Ernst Seibert.Wien: Internationales Institut für Jugendliteratur und Leseforschung, 1996. 85 p. 21 cm. ÖS 50.00. (Internationales Institut, Mayerhofgasse 6, A-1040 Wien, fax [43 1] 505 28 31 17)

This is a continuation of the same author's Bibliographie wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten zur Jugendliteratur und Leseforschung in Österreich (Vienna: Institute, 1989). Its 325 entries cover the most diverse formats, from dissertations and other university publications to brochures circulated by institutes and publishers. Left out are articles in journals, for which the author directs readers to the annual Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung, of which he is co-editor. (The Bibliographie is also structured in much the same manner as Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung.) Entries include subject headings-the basis of a subject index at the end of the volume. It is intended that this work be continued in electronic form for users of the institute's library in Vienna. [Maria Michels-Kohlhage/jg]

97-1/2-069

Deutsch-jüdische Kinder- und Jugendliteratur von der Haskala bis 1945: die deutsch- und hebräischsprachigen Schriften des deutschsprachigen Raums; ein bibliographisches Handbuch [German-Jewish Children's Literature from the Haskala to 1945: Publications in German and Hebrew within the German-speaking Part of Europe; A Bibliographic Handbook]. Zohar Shavit und Hans-Heino Ewers, with Annegret Völpel, Ran HaCohen, and Dieter Richter. Stuttgart; Weimar: Metzler, 1996. 2 vols. 1495 p., ill. 25 cm. ISBN 3-476-01421-5: DM 398.00

97-1/2-070

Das jüdische Jugendbuch: von der Aufklärung bis zum Dritten Reich [Jewish Children's Books: From the Enlightenment to the Third Reich]. Gabriele von Glasenapp und Michael Nagel. Stuttgart; Weimar: Metzler, 1996. xii, 298 p. 23 cm. ISBN 3-476-01413-4: DM 128.00

After years of neglect, the study of Jewish children's literature in Germany has benefited from a recent collaboration between the Institute for Children's Book Research at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Tel Aviv. Both of the works presented here are fruits of this collaboration.

The two-volume "bibliographic handbook" provides information on 2431 titles, beginning with the Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment of the late 1800s, through 1945. Works are included regardless of whether the author was Jewish. Instead, if the work was intended to be in the Jewish tradition or was adopted as such, this has sufficed to justify inclusion. All genres have been considered germane, including non-fiction and magazines. Bibliographic information is exhaustive, including a work's later publishing history, and notes include a discussion of the work's popular reception. Reviews and other published criticism are also noted. As if this were not enough, biographical information is included for numerous publishers, editors, writers, illustrators, and more than 60 publishers of German-Jewish children's literature are presented. This is an impressive work, well suited to aid researchers bibliographically and in many other ways who are seeking to reconstruct the interplay of German and Jewish culture and the process of constructing and sustaining Jewish identity in a non-Jewish culture.

97-1/2-075

Kinder- und Jugendliteratur: ein Lexikon; Autoren, Illustratoren, Verlage, Begriffe [Children's Literature: A Encyclopedia; Authors, Illustrators, Publishers, Concepts]. Ed. Alfred C. Baumgärtner und Heinrich Pleticha. Meitingen: Corian-Verlag Wimmer. Loose-leaf ed. 23 cm

[Basic work.] July 1995 (1995). ISBN 3-89048-150-7: DM 98.00 (with dividers)Supplement 1 (1996). DM 64.80

Until now, the four-volume Lexikon der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, compiled between 1975 and 1982 by Klaus Doderer and his collaborators at the Institute of Children's Book Research at the University of Frankfurt, was the only universal German-language encyclopedia in the field of children's literature. This new work (as the editors' foreword makes clear) sees itself as the successor to Doderer, thereby inviting reviewers to make the comparison with its imposing predecessor. Yet so far there is too little to base such a judgment on, for the first loose-leaf installments are slight and the selection of articles strangely skewed, as if all the articles which happened to have been delivered by given date were simply bundled and released. The work therefore makes a haphazard impression.

The Lexikon consists of six parts, each with its own alphabetical arrangement: authors, illustrators, publishers, institutions, literary concepts, themes and aspects. The "authors" section is disproportionately well appointed so far, with 53 articles ("illustrators" has only two and "institutions" none at all), but of these only two are on authors not covered by Doderer, and these are both surprisingly not new writers, but authors of the 19^th century. Bibliographies for historical writers are often identical to those provided in Doderer, while articles on contemporary writers, e.g. Astrid Lindgren or Dagmar Chidolue, do not list more recent research. The articles on publishers have often been penned by the publishers themselves-with the result, needless to say, that critical distance is lacking. At the same time, several of the articles available so far, e.g. on radio plays for children or on film versions of children's literature, are quite excellent.

Yet in this age of CD-ROM reference works (and short-staffed libraries), one wonders what possible legitimation there still is for loose-leaf lexicons of this type, with their implicit expection that purchasers will have the time to carefully remove outdated sections and replace them with new ones. Other than for legal update services, this format represents a total anachronism. As for the quality of this new work, only time will tell. We are left to hope that future installments are released in quick succession and that this new encyclopedia indeed proves to be a worthy continuation of Doderer's Lexikon. [hw/jg]

Next Section
Previous Section
Table of Contents