2025/09/01 by Joachim C. Häberlen · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Communism, Protests, Social Movements #German History and Society #German legal, social, and political studies
paper · doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghaf039
Abstract In April 1967, West Germany’s first adventure playground opened in Märkisches Viertel, West Berlin; it was soon to become a model for the entire Federal Republic. Adventure playgrounds were more than places for children to have fun: they were meant to teach democratic skills and virtues to children who grew up in urban environments that, critics charged, made them lonely, ensured they were unable to communicate, prevented them from being creative, and hindered a spirit of solidarity, all skills a democracy would need. The article explores this adventure playground movement. It first discusses critiques of modern cities and especially the situation of children in those cities, not least at conventional playgrounds; it then turns to adventure playgrounds as potential sites for democratic learning; and finally it discusses how such ideas fared in practice, highlighting the numerous challenges left-leaning pedagogues faced when trying to teach democratic values, not least violent and unruly children themselves. Discussing how contemporaries imagined democracy could work as a ‘way of life’ beyond democratic institutions and how such teaching of democracy worked on the ground, the article contributes to a historicization of democratic ideas in West German history during the long 1970s.