A kindergarten: lunch, painting and tidying up, 1937
Small children eat at round tables on a brick terrace, paint a glass jar with their teacher and put their toys back into a big cupboard.
Children of four and five sit at small round tables before a brick wall, eating bread and apples; a boy grins, two little girls with bobbed hair chatter with their mouths full, and a girl in an embroidered bodice looks straight up as she chews. Indoors a young teacher holds a glass jar while a little girl paints it with a fine brush, and afterwards the children put boxes and toy trains back onto the shelves of a tall cupboard.
The kindergarten was a German invention: Friedrich Fröbel opened the first in Thuringia in 1840 and built his teaching on play and handicraft. By 1937 the National Socialist People's Welfare under Erich Hilgenfeldt was taking kindergartens away from the churches and towns, to shape children for the national community from their earliest years.
Film Painting a glass jar in the kindergarten, 1937
Film Children at lunch in a kindergarten, 1937
Film Two little girls talking over their meal, 1937
Film Kindergarten children eating at the long table, 1937
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