For a long time the word Neger has been used in German literature including Children’s books as a term defining people of Subsaharan Africa or as they call them today “Farbige” (coloured) people.
Now various publishing houses have come out to declare they will be removing the words Neger, Negerlein and Zigeuner from all their classic children’s books. Publishing houses like Thienemann of Stuttgart and Friedrich Oetinger from Hamburg promised to work towards this goal.
“For the books to remain classics, they will have to adapt to linguistic and political changes”,Klaus Willberg of Thienemann publishing house of Stuttgart commented on this new move.
Books like “Die Kleine Hexe”; “Räuber Hotzenplotz”-Trilogy and “Krabat” by Otfried Preußlers and
“Jim Knopf” and “Pippi Langstrumpf” by Astrid Lindgren will all be reviewed and such discriminative words completely removed. Before such words had only been cancelled but left in the books.
Otrfried Preußler who’s currently 89 years old had already refused to have his books reviewed saying that they might loose their authenticity.
Kristina Schröder the current minister of Family Affairs in Germany was recently under fire when the media found out that she reads Astrid Lindgren books to her children, yet these are books known for their inclusion of discriminative words.
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