Chapter 12

German in Hebrew letters

Jewish children’s literature constitutes a special case of transnational encounter. Focusing on the German-language area, this chapter discusses the transnational character of Jewish children’s literature on two levels. The first is the linguistic level. In contrast to non-Jewish children’s literature, Jewish children’s literature in Germany has appeared since the end of the eighteenth century in three forms (Hebrew, German, and German written in the Hebrew letters). The second level concerns the multilingualism of the literature and the distribution and modalities of its reception – both inside and outside German-language areas. The chapter deals, among others, with texts by Joachim Heinrich Campe, Moses Mendelssohn, David Samosc, and Aaron Wolfssohn. It will be shown that it was primarily the transnational character of children’s literature through which a cultural transfer between Jewish and non-Jewish children’s literature began in the last third of the eighteenth century. However, it will also be shown that this was a highly one-sided cultural transfer, initiated and driven almost exclusively by the Jewish side.