Rebellious little girls: Irmgard Keun’s "Grown-Ups Don’t Understand" and "Child of All Nations"

The two novels published during exile by Irmgard Keun (1905–1982), a successful writer in the Weimar Republic, both feature a child as their protagonist and narrator. In Grown-Ups Don’t Understand, the child protagonist describes, in a humorous, impertinent and disenchanted tone, not only the family situation, but also the social context during the Wilhelminian period. In Child of All Nations, a young cosmopolitan girl narrates the pilgrimage of her family into exile in various European cities interacting with the otherness she encounters in emigration. These Kinder-und Jugendgeschichten present figures of unusual little girls who do not respond to the planned schemes, anticipating and expressing in an innovative way traits that characterize rebellious girls in later years. Keun takes on an interesting perspective, preferring protagonists who fundamentally question the systematic separation of literature between children and adults. In this way, these stories open up a space for experiments in behaviour and for the conquest of the heroine’s autonomy.