[Children, Collect Bones! : Teaching Aids and Propaganda Material on Bone-Collections and Bone-Utilisation Used in...

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries bones were an essential raw material for the German chemical industry, vital to the production of fertilizer, glue, gelatine, soap and other products. As most of this material was imported, the German school system during the "Third Reich" took the utilisation of bones as an example to illustrate the relevance of the four-year plan of 1936 and its policy of economic self-sufficiency. The school children were encouraged to collect bones from domestic sources and bring them to the collecting points in the schools. Several NS-institutions developed a variety of teaching aids and materials to support school education on this economically and politically important topic. Focussing on the example of bone-utilisation, this paper examines the messages and intentions of these educational materials. It also demonstrates how even apparently ideologically unbiased school subjects, such as chemistry, were instrumentalised for the political indoctrination of the pupils.