Young Talents for the Performance Society: Youth Competitions in Germany in the 20th Century

During the 20th century, a growing number of fields of activity were transferred to competition formats. Competitions for children and adolescents especially became a mass phenomenon, which was simultaneously attractive to democracies and dictatorships, in market as well as planned economies. Reinhild Kreis explores the competitions as a means of shaping social and economic orders in their continuities and ruptures for the Nazi State, the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. The contests are interpreted as practices of attributing achievement, which were meant to shape patterns of thought and behaviour and thereby influence both individual and collective futures.