“BOOKS AS MESSENGERS OF PEACE”. JELLA LEPMAN’S TRAVELLING BOOK EXHIBITIONS IN POST-WAR GERMANY

In the aftermath of the second world conflict, the Allies’ effort to liberate Western Europe from totalitarianisms relied on weaving a cultural fabric around democratic values and the promotion of reading amongst the wider public proved useful for such task, through the reconstruction of public li-braries and the recognition of changes in the habits and needs of European readers. It is on these grounds that Jella Lepman (1891-1970), writer and journalist, set up in Germany her traveling exhibitions of international chil-dren’s books, from 1946 to 1949. The propelling visionary force of her proj-ect lied in the ability to give concreteness to the effort of educating young Germans to the new democratic and pacifist values: through books as “mes-sengers of peace”, connections among very different cultural experiences could be built. The present research aims to reconstruct the history of Jella Lepman’s exhibitions by analysing the quantitative and qualitative data re-garding the works displayed as well as the available information on the im-pact these endeavours had on young visitors. The archival collection stored at Munich’s Jugendbibliothek shows how extraordinarily modern the choic-es of the exhibiting materials and of the educational projects were, in order to invite children to engage with the books displayed, in spaces specifically tailored for them, making young readers protagonists in Europe’s process of democratic renewal beyond nationalisms.