The role and significance of literary texts for children in the Literature of the ethnic Germans – The children‘s anthology Igele-Bigele of the Germans in Hungary

Abstract

The anthology Igele-Bigele, published in 1980, was the first attempt by the literature of German minority in Hungary to promote the reading of books by children. This laudable intention was realised using texts by authors of the literature of the Germans in Hungary active at that time, but – with one exception – no new names appeared compared with previously published anthologies. The volume was compiled by Valeria Koch, who at that time worked as an editor for the journal Neue Zeitung. From today’s perspective, the suitability of some of the texts as children’s literature may be judged differently from the way it was at the time of publication, but this anthology nonetheless represents a remarkable start:  Hungarian-German literature turning to children, something that clearly occurred independently, without reference to foreign – including Hungarian-language and German – models. It should not be forgotten that at that time Hungarian-German literature was limited in terms of quantity, and the number of texts suitable for children was low. In this situation, the publisher made the best of the situation and enabled the publication of the anthology, which can rightly be described as the starting point of the children’s literature of the Germans of Hungary, as it was an important forerunner of all later children’s books for the ethnic Germans of Hungary.