German Language and Literature Commons^™

Literature And Propaganda: The Structure Of Conversion In Schenzinger's Hitlerjunge Quex, John Daniel Stahl

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Propaganda literature as a genre can profitably be analyzed by means of a structuralist approach, as Susan R. Suleiman has shown in her study of the French ideological novel. Extending her discussion of the "structure of confrontation" and the "structure of apprenticeship," this study postulates the "structure of conversion" as a fundamental form of propaganda literature. Through loss of self to a greater entity, the central character in fiction exemplifying this form finds a new identity in self-submergence. A once-popular novel by the German pro-fascist author Karl Aloys Schenzinger, Hitlerjunge Quex ( 1932), serves as a model for investigation into …