Preisträgerin 2015

On the person

Dr. Julia Benner (née Hoffmann) studied comparative literary studies, English philology and cultural anthropology / European ethnology at the Georg-August-University, Göttingen. She did a doctorate on "Federkrieg. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur gegen den Nationalsozialismus (1933-1945)" (A war of words. Children's and youth literature against the National Socialism 1933-1945) at the DFG-research training group "Generationengeschichte" (History of Generations). Following this, she became a project employee at the chair of Prof. Heinrich Detering and a postdoc scholarship holder of the GSGG. Subsequently, she accepted a position as junior professor for Newer German Literature /children's and youth literature and media at the Humbolt-University, Berlin.

Research foci:
committed children's and youth literature, intermedia correlations, ecology and literature, literary representations of animals, historical children's and youth literature.


Dissertation
Federkrieg. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur gegen den Nationalsozialismus 1933-1945

(A war of words. Children's and youth literature against the national socialism 1933-1945)

Short description

In the exile as well as in the oppositional literature system in Germany, committed children?s and youth literature occurred that turned vehemently against the National Socialism. Many of these works have fallen into desuetude. Julia Benner follows their traces back in history and for the first time delivers an extensive presentation of this form of resistance.

The questions 'with which means the authors wrote against the National Socialism' and 'under which circumstances the production of children's and youth literature was even feasible', make up the centre of her research. In exemplary analyses of the work of Maria Gleits, Kurt Helds, Fritz Rothgießers and Lisa Tetzners, Benner presents new perspectives on children's and youth literature in the period from 1933 to 1945.