In search of a new education - History of German youth 1813-1945

The story of German youth in modern times is that of an emotional outburst, of a rebellion against the world of machines, of the rejection of spaceless concrete cities with their adulterated disorders. If Germany wanted to survive, it had to implement new forms of education and training of its elites. German society, a closed world of business and technology, did not understand the problem, or denied it. Left to its own devices, helped by a few lucid educators, German youth set out in search of a new man, a model, “image,” says the poet, “of a better time.” Youth, which is itself its own society, spontaneously found the ways of its education. These were his years of apprenticeship, matured after 1918 by the nagging thoughts of dead soldiers. - In the artificial and unregulated world of a reason dedicated to abstaction and utopia, the youth of industrial societies experience abandonment. However, it is the natural force called to accept the weight of the discipline that will ultimately be imposed by the laws of the living world, without which there is neither individual nor collective destiny. Even today, man knows nothing about biological laws, despite the work of some researchers that remains unknown. The experience of German youth provides significant examples. Above all, it provides an immense field for reflection. - From the student uprising against Napoleon in 1813 to the National Socialist youth that appeared in 1922, including the emergence of hiking groups in 1895, this study, which goes off the beaten track, is of capital interest at a time when a society decay leaves its youth, victims of a bankrupt educational system, in the most tragic abandonment.

Preface by Philippe Conrad

480 pages