Backfischroman

The Backfischroman (teenage girl novel) is a German literature genre. It denotes a particular type of novel of the 19th and early 20th century primarily aiming at adolescent girls as an audience.

In the 19th century the now antiquated Backfisch was common term to describe girls between the age 13 and 16 or more general during puberty. The exact origin of the term is not known. Most likely it was taken from the identical word used by fishermen to describe small young fish in a catch which are of less use. For the origin of this use two different explanations are offered in literature. One states that it is derived from the English word back, because those fish were often thrown back into the water. The other resorts to an alternative literal meaning as baked fish and states that traditionally in cooking such small fish were only prepared by baking since they were considered not large enough for boiled or fried dishes.

The Backfischroman is usually told from a first person perspective with the main character being an adolescent girl of middle or higher class upbringing. She tends to be an open and friendly person who pursues her own interests independent of her society's norms and later after a learning process makes her own "free" decision to accept the stereotypical role for women as wife and mother. Typical well known examples are Emmy von Roden's Der Trotzkopf (1885) und Clementine Helm's Backfischchens Leiden und Freuden (1863). Later examples like Else Ury's Nesthäckchen allow a bit more room and different topics for the female protagonist being not quite as restrictive as the before. This is due to changing attitudes from the Wilhelmine period (1871-1918) to Weimar period (1918-1933). The terms Backfischroman and Backfischliteratur are not applied for girl literature of the middle and late the 20th century, which features a vastly expanded range of topics and has broken free of stereotypical roles for women.

References

Mädchenliteratur. In: Friederike Ursula Eigler, Susanne Kord: The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature. Greenwood, 1997, ISBN 0313293139, S. 293-294 (excerpt, p. 293, at Google Books)
Jennifer Redmann: Nostalgia and Optimism in Else Ury's "Nesthäkchen" Books for Young Girls in the Weimar Republic. The German Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 4 (Fall, 2006), pp. 465–483 (JSTOR)

References

Further reading