Childhood and Happiness in German Romanticism, Progressive Education and in the West German Anti-Authoritarian 'Kinderladen' Movement in the Context of 1968

The subject of this paper is the construction of childhood as a time of happiness in different historical periods. It first analyses the construction of childhood as a time of happiness in the German romantic period in the eighteenth century. Secondly, the paper discusses the construction of happy mothers and children in "The Century of Childhood" (1900) by the Swedish writer Ellen Key and thirdly, the idea of happy children in educational programmes within the movement of 1968 in West Germany, especially in the so called "Kinderladen" and within the alternative milieu of the 1970s and 1980s, also inspired by the US psychotherapist Jean Liedloff and her famous book "In Search of Happiness Lost" (1977). The paper focuses on differences and similarities in the construction of the happy childhood. It shows that the discussion about children's happiness is part of the history of childhood and plays a decisive role in the pedagogical thought concerning childhood. The several discoveries of childhood in modern history were often connected with the idea of childhood as a happy time. In the twentieth century the discourse about children's happiness is linked with the history of the psychological self and his education. A tendency to psychologise the self is an impact of the discourse. (Contains 53 footnotes.)