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How Nazi Child-Rearing Still Hurts Germans Today
But generational patterns can be changed
We know the Nazis were evil. What they did to Jews, to Slavs, to Gypsies. Also to Christians who tried to defend the Jews or who stood up to the Nazi party. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a Lutheran pastor who fought against the Nazis and died in a concentration camp.
However, what may surprise people — they were also horrible to their own children.
Prior to the Nazis
Prior to the 1930s, German parents were similar to other central European parents. They were strict. And as everything from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales to Krampus attest, there was a flavor of darkness in what they taught their children. Yet they also laughed with their families.
When I was working on my Master’s in history, I read a book about the German family in the early modern era — from about 1450 to 1800. The portrayal of the family in the book, derived from historical records, stories, and surviving physical evidence, portrays close-knit and happy families.
During the Victorian era, the “language of flowers” was popular in Germany, and men would use particular flowers to court the ladies that they cared for.
