Below are the contents of the first edition of ‘For Our Children’, a regular supplement to Clara Zetkin’s Die Gleichheit and the first socialist children’s magazine. It was remarkably successful, with ‘annuals’ of the supplement produced each year as special book editions for Christmas. What is striking to me, as I start to engage with the magazine properly for the first time, is the ambitious and challenging nature of these materials, which reflects the bold aspirations of Social Democracy itself in seeking to overhaul existing social values and fashion the working class into a force that could rule society. Today, many adults might struggle getting through such material within the space of a fortnight, let alone younger people: indeed, such a supplement could become an excellent resource for undergraduate students of German!
Let me know if you would like more such materials in the future, and don’t forget to support my work on Patreon.
Theodor Storm, Autumn (Poem.)
Heinrich Scharrelmann, In Front of the Knife Shop
A Saying, by Friedrich Schiller
The Erl-king’s Daughter. From Herder’s „Voices of the People in their Songs”. (Poem.)
Ivan Turgenev, First Love/A Fire at Sea
Theodor Etzel, The Ox and the Lion’s Wedding (Poem.)
The Brothers Grimm, The Seven Swallows.
Viktor Blüthgen, The Song of Snails. (Poem.)