Toys, consumption, and middle class childhood in Imperial Germany, 1871--1918.

摘要

This dissertation explores the commercialization of childhood in late nineteenth-century Germany via an exploration of children's toys designed specifically for use in the playroom. These miniatures developed into socially significant markers of a normal, middle-class childhood in the Kaiserreich. At the time, most children did not have allowances, so manufacturers marketed toys at parents. Their shape and form corresponded to adult desires to mold children in a productive fashion. For many middle-class families, the playroom developed into a panopticon, but with a twist. While it was a place of order, observation and control, it was also a site of nurturing play that all participants fondly remembered. Mothers dominated the space of the playroom, or Kinderstube, a room to which most fathers rarely came. In the Kinderstube, young girls and boys learned about the potential of middle-class values to rejuvenate Germany, proper gender roles, the importance of technology to modern society, and the significance of the nation-state as a form of political organization.;This was by no means a simple, uncontested process. Adults fought over proper toy form and use. Many wanted technologically exact miniatures of real things such as trains and doll houses designed to prepare boys and girls for future callings. Others just as passionately called for more generic, simpler miniatures that forced children to use their imagination. They believed it was more important to teach critical thinking skills than to telescope youngsters into a profession. The vibrant consumer culture surrounding toys facilitated this very public debate. Producers willingly responded to buyers from both camps, and individual consumers created and marketed their own toys. The making, marketing, and consumption of miniatures formed a site around which we can see how adults as consumers tried to fashion modern, middle-class citizens out of boys and girls. They also remind us that Imperial Germany had a vibrant consumer culture that allowed people to shape social values.