She is probably the most famous girl in world literature, Pippi Longstocking, who has been the subject of the most debate, from the beginning until today, 20 years after her death. When Astrid Lindgren submitted the original manuscript to the children’s book publisher Bonnier in 1944, the publisher rejected it. “I had young children myself and I was horrified to imagine what would happen if they modeled themselves on this little girl.” A decision he regretted for the rest of his life. When Pippi was broadcast on Swedish radio, educators immediately demanded that this “demoralizing program” be ended. “Pippi Longstocking was already a bone of contention, a popular subject for teachers, literary scholars and ethicists,” wrote Sybil Countess Schönfeldt in the biography “Astrid Lindgren. Memories of a Woman of the Century”.
“I still get a lot of children’s letters,” Astrid Lindgren explained when she visited her apartment at Vasa Park in Stockholm in August 1997, and the table next to her was overflowing with paper. Children’s letters, “with very detailed questions that I can’t even answer. And the children still want to know the same things as they did 50 years ago… Because children are children, even if some childhoods are so terrible today that you have to cry , when you hear about it. But one can only wish that the children overcome the parents’ new stupidities.” She would like today’s young generation, who are also influenced by her books, who demonstrate worldwide against environmental destruction, racial hatred and intolerance. As the founder of Fridays for Future, is Greta Thunberg not influenced by Pippi Longstocking?
“She pushed the boundaries of what children’s books could look like and what they could contain”
At 90, she no longer likes some of her books – she has her daughter read them to her because of an eye condition. But to Pippi Longstocking, “no, I wouldn’t change anything”. And yet, despite the great international success, the critical protests have not died down. Especially the third volume “Pippi in Taka-Tuka-Land” is condemned as an example of colonial thinking. Even if Pippi’s father is no longer called the N-King, but the South Sea King, and Pippi doesn’t behave like a princess and only experiences adventures with the island children. Astrid Lindgren received the alternative Nobel Prize later and later for her “commitment to justice, non-violence and the understanding of minorities”, also in recognition of the fact that she wrote nine volumes together with the photographer Anna Riwkin-Brick in the 1950s written by children in Africa, Asia and Europe. They were published by Rabén & Sjögren, the publishing house where her own books were published and where she worked as program director from 1946-1970 and very successfully promoted Swedish children’s and young adult authors. Which then came out in German at Oetinger Verlag and had a great influence on German youth literature.
Astrid Lindgren’s demands on children’s literature, which are documented in numerous letters, not only provide an insight into the work on her own books. In the volume “The Unknown Astrid Lindgren. Her Time as a Publisher” (Oetinger Verlag), Kjell Bohlund, who was a publisher at Rabén & Sjögren for a long time, tells how she worked with the authors. In the letters she develops her aesthetic standards, which are a challenge that can lead to very different interpretations. “She pushed the boundaries of what children’s books could look like and what they could contain,” writes Bohlund. A challenge, it was always about freedom. “Not about liberation in the political sense, but about artistic freedom. Liberation from pedagogical and religious constraints, freedom for authors, illustrators and photographers and the right of children to be seen as equal readers.
This attitude made Astrid Lindgren vulnerable, even in the 1980s with the anti-authoritarian currents, which, however, did not harm the success of her books. Today, the concern of concerned adults is primarily concerned with the question of whether Pippi (and other of her characters) must continue to be adapted to the requirements of current correctness. When she said goodbye, she was still thinking about the many letters the children had written to her asking for help. The longing to live like in Bullerby or to be as strong and autonomous as Pippi Longstocking still determines the lives of many children today.