by Martin Kalb

I did not anticipate that I would focus on images or constructs of youth in Munich. My research was originally tied to denazification in Nuremberg, later Bavaria more broadly. That interest took shape as I was working in the Stadtarchiv City Archive in Nuremberg for several months, and while I was helping organize a database tied to individuals with connections to National Socialism. I dug deeper, looked into the main study on denazification in Bavaria at the time, and wondered how Nuremberg might fit into all that. Later on, once I began my Ph.D. program in the United States, I continued to look into the scholarship, maybe with a fresh mind given a broader change in scenery. In this context I was reading through Die Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on microfilm in the library one evening. At the time, it was among the few daily newspapers I could access for Bavaria. One headline struck me: “Bavarian Problems: Youth-Food-Export.” I wondered, how could the state of the young be as important as economic recovery? What was the obsession tied to youth about?

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