Beethoven und Mozart als Helden der Jugend?

Über Komponistenbiografien in sowjetischen Jugendbüchern

Abstract

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[English title and abstract below]

Детская литература как одно из средств пропаганды сталинизма способствовала господству номенклатуры, относительно длительному сохранению тех форм общества и государства, которые сложились после »термидора« 1929 года.

[Die Kinderliteratur als eines der Propagandamittel des Stalinismus trug zur Herrschaft der Nomenklatura und zur relativ langen Erhaltung derjenigen Gesellschafts und Staatsformen bei, die nach dem »Thermidor« von 1929 entstanden waren.]
(Fateev 2007, S. 300)

Wie Andrej Fateev in dieser Aussage als eines der Ergebnisse seiner Studie zu Kinderliteratur und Stalinismus konstatiert, hatte die Literatur für Kinder und Jugendliche in der Sowjetunion ein besonderes Gewicht als Propagandainstrument. Nachvollziehbar wird dies nicht nur an dem Aufkommen neuer Themen und Inhalte in der Jugendliteratur, sondern vor allem auch an der breiten Diskussion und der Gründung neuer Institutionen.

Beethoven and Mozart as Heroes for the Young?
Composer Biographies in Soviet Youth Literature

Starting with a discussion of the development of children’s and youth literature in the Soviet Union and its integration into ideological educational systems, this article then looks at a specific field of interest: composer biographies for a young readership published between the 1930s and the late 1960s. In general, in the Soviet Union, the medium of biography was seen as having potential for heroic historiography in the socialist sense, and one which could provide role models and concrete images of thought formulated in Marxist-Leninist terms. The widespread distribution of biographies for young readers in the course of intensified ideological educational work in the Soviet Union contrasts greatly to the situation in the Federal Republic of Germany where after 1945, as a reaction to the ideologisation and portrayal of heroes under National Socialism, biographies were quasi taboo. But how do composers become heroes of books for children and young adults? Mozart and Beethoven are particularly suitable examples, since their biographies have been subject to a long tradition of heroisation and reinterpretation. These composers were also assigned new attributes in the Soviet Union: Beethoven was elevated to the status of an exemplary revolutionary and Mozart likewise to that of a fighter for freedom and against feudalistic oppression.