Lecture: Childhoods in Western Europe between the World Wars (1918-1939)

The interwar period marked a new era for European children. The Great War of 1914-1918 had immediate and significant impacts on family life and upbringing. New political mass movements as well as the new nation states tried to shape children into “new man” fit for a better future. At the same time the advent of a popular mass and leisure culture opened up new horizons for parents and children. The lecture sketches these contradictory changes and tries to determine the role of childhood and children in the European "Age of Extremes".

Till Kössler is professor for the history of Education, Childhood and Youth at Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg. He received his Ph.D. at Ruhr-Universität Bochum with a work on the social and cultural history of Communism in West Germany after 1945. Between 2003 and 2011, he worked as an assistant professor for Modern European History at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and from 2011 till 2018 as a professor for the history of Education, Childhood and Youth at Bochum University.
Recent publications include: Kinder der Demokratie. Religiöse Erziehung und urbane Moderne in Spanien, 1890-1939, München: Oldenbourg 2013; Vererbung oder Umwelt? Ungleichheit zwischen Natur und Gesellschaft seit 1945, Göttingen: Wallstein 2016 (Ed. with Constantin Goschler); Obsession der Gegenwart. Zeit im 20. Jahrhundert (=Geschichte und Gesellschaft Sonderheft 25), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht 2015 (Ed. with Alexander Geppert).