Nostalgia and Propaganda in Picturebooks about German History

This paper investigates the multiple dimensions of picturebooks about flight by analysing six picturebooks that focus on Germany as a place or destination of flight. First, a general script of flight is developed to pinpoint the textual and visual strategies in relation to key issues associated with flight. Second, the paper elaborates on nostalgia as a prominent feature of certain picturebooks on flight. Finally, the paper investigates the procedures employed by picturebook makers to appeal to the readers’ empathy to the extent of using propaganda messages. With respect to the selected picturebooks, three refugee movements can be discerned: flight from the National Socialist dictatorship, refugee movements in the postwar years from Eastern Europe to Germany, and escape from East Germany to West Germany after the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Against this backdrop, the paper demonstrates how the interplay of nostalgia and propaganda in these picturebooks is calibrated.