At Home in Nuremberg: First Reader – the first reading book for children, used to instill Nazi ideology at an early ...

At Home in Nuremberg: First Reader – the first reading book for children, used to instill Nazi ideology at an early age. Nuremberg, 1933 – first edition

Bei uns in Nürnberg: Erstes Lesebuch – “At Home in Nuremberg: First Reader”. Published by Verlag der Friedrich Korn’schen Buchhandlung – a first-grade reader with explicit Nazi messages, issued by the Nuremberg District Teachers' Association. Edited by Adolf Berckl, Karl Heil, Karl Merkert, and Karl Schnedder. Illustrations by Margarete Wolfinger. Printed by R. Oldenbourg, publishing house of the Friedrich Korn Bookshop. Nuremberg, [1933] – first uncensored edition, published the same year Adolf Hitler rose to power. In German. Extremely rare.

A reading primer for first-grade children in Nazi Germany, presented in the form of short stories accompanied by large, full-page illustrations. Published in Nuremberg shortly after Hitler’s rise to power by the city’s official teachers’ association, the book integrates clear Nazi messaging, including salutes to the Führer and party ideology. The illustrations feature swastika flags, Hitler salutes, and other symbols promoting the National Socialist worldview.

On the opening page of the book, an illustration shows two children on their first day of school greeting each other with a “Heil Hitler” salute. As the book continues, full-color illustrations depict children marching out of the imperial castle gate in Nuremberg, proudly waving swastika flags. Another illustration shows crowds at an official parade taking place in Adolf Hitler Square (Hauptmarkt) during the Nazi Party Rally, with swastika banners flying from every corner. The image stretches from Fleischbrücke to the castle, accompanied by a celebratory rhyme: “Flags in procession, flags in every street.” These Nazi-themed illustrations and texts are interwoven with seemingly innocent early-reader content—such as poems about balloons, a clown, a trip to the amusement park, springtime, and the tale of Little Red Riding Hood—presented side by side with overt propaganda. A poem titled “The Good Comrade” tells of a fallen comrade and is accompanied by an image showing Nazi soldiers conducting a military burial at the Luitpoldarena (the vast square in Nuremberg converted into a Nazi ceremonial ground), with rows of swastika flags waving—in a reading primer for first-grade children. In another story, “Heiner’s Birthday”, young guests arrive: “In the afternoon, visitors arrive: Fritz and his sister... Fritz has a swastika flag. The girl brings flowers, and Hans plays music…” The accompanying image shows a boy raising his arm in a Nazi salute, next to another boy holding a swastika flag.

A story titled “The Hitler Youth” describes children marching:

“One, two, three, four,

We march through the city,

In brown shirts, cream-colored in the wind,

Trum, trum, trum, trum,

Step by step, in rhythm.

Hold tight! Hold tight!

Let the flags fly high!

Show your being, show the world,

That we stand together in loyalty!

Outside the city, the Führer calls: ‘Detach! Halt!’

Stirring, the soldiers stand still,

Not a limb moves.

March!

We go to fight…”

The illustration shows Hitler Youth boys in formation, with drums and swastika flags.

Later in the book appears a story titled “The Battle”, describing Hitler Youth children charging into battle against the enemy and returning victorious, singing the Führer’s song: “The leader calls – sing, comrades, sing, so the sound will echo through the streets! And the whole group begins to sing: ‘…A land full of love and life, my German homeland…’”.

Another segment titled “Die Reichswehr” (the name of the German army before it was renamed the Wehrmacht in 1935) depicts the army marching with steel helmets and rifles, while children line the streets and raise their arms in the Hitler salute: “We salute our Reichswehr. They protect our homeland…”

At the end of the book are basic reading exercises intended for early reading practice for German children. The cover features an illustration of the “Zwetschgermoh” – a clown-like figure made of dried plums strung on a thread, set against the backdrop of Nuremberg’s city wall. A doll in this form was traditionally given to German schoolchildren each year on December 24th, to mark the beginning of the school year.

The book’s illustrator, Margarete Wolfinger (1891–1954), studied at the local School of Applied Arts under Professors Rudolf Schiestl and Hermann Gradl. She worked as an art teacher and illustrator of books and magazines, including Jugendlust, published by the Bavarian Teachers' Association. Wolfinger specialized in color linocuts in the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) style. By the time this book was published, Wolfinger was already a well-known artist in Germany. 

With Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, children’s books and early educational materials became a central tool for disseminating Nazi propaganda. Primers (Fibeln) and teaching aids were adapted to promote ideological education from a young age, incorporating themes of nationalism, loyalty to the Führer, and racial ideology. Both texts and illustrations were designed to reflect an "ideal" daily life under Nazi rule, emphasizing the role of the German family, values of obedience and discipline, and praise for the Aryan race. Children were exposed to stories and images in which soldiers, farmers, and laborers were presented as role models, while antisemitic and propagandistic imagery was embedded in order to shape their emotional and moral worldview from an early age.

Over the years, especially after the war and well into the early 2000s, this reader was reprinted in numerous censored editions, with all pages containing Nazi references and illustrations of swastika flags removed. 

The first, uncensored edition offered here is extremely rare. According to the WorldCat global library catalog, only three institutional records of this edition exist all in libraries in Germany.

Numerous studies have been published over the years on the destructive influence of this “First Reader”—which contains overt Nazi content—on the education of children in Nazi Germany, as well as on similar educational books from the period. See, for example:

• Kristin Straube-Heinze, Carsten Heinze, Lesen lernen im Nationalsozialismus. Theoriekonzepte – Kindheitsbilder – Bildungspolitik, Bielefeld, 2021 – a comprehensive study on reading instruction during the Third Reich, analyzing pedagogical approaches, representations of childhood, and education policy under Nazi rule.

• Gisela Teistler (ed.), Lesen lernen in Diktaturen der 1930er und 1940er Jahre. Fibeln in Deutschland, Italien und Spanien, Hannover, 2006. (Studien zur internationalen Schulbuchforschung, Vol. 116) – a comparative work on reading instruction in totalitarian regimes of the 1930s and 1940s—Germany, Italy, and Spain—through the analysis of early educational readers.

• Ulrich Pantle, Bei uns in der Stadt. Kindliche Lebenswirklichkeiten und fiktive Stadträume in deutschsprachigen Fibeln, in: Candide – Journal for Architectural Knowledge, No. 1 (Dec. 2009), pp. 69–96 – an article analyzing how German children's readers (Fibeln) constructed representations of everyday urban life and the fictional child’s world through environmental and architectural design.

88 pages. 24 cm. Complete copy. Good condition.