This children’s book turns Nazi Jew-hatred into lessons for family and classroom life. Its stories, caricatures, and slogans teach readers to treat invented racial types and accusations as facts, then praise Hitler and Streicher. The text is evidence of Nazi propaganda methods, not of Jewish conduct.
Provenance
Ernst Hiemer wrote Der Giftpilz, Philipp Rupprecht illustrated it under the name Fips, and the Stürmer-Verlag published it in Nuremberg in 1938. The book used short stories, classroom scenes, family lessons, caricatures and slogans to teach Nazi Jew-hatred to children and adults.1
The stories do not document Jewish conduct. They invent racial types and staged incidents, then present those inventions as lessons about how readers should recognize, fear and exclude יהודים YEHUDIM. The sequence moves from claims about bodies and religious texts to accusations of economic fraud, sexual danger, cruelty, treason and world conspiracy. Its final pages turn those lessons into praise for Adolf Hitler, Julius Streicher and organized Nazi action.
The controlling witness is the University of Michigan copy represented by the Google Books scan.
Contents and scope
This edition presents the complete German text across 64 book images. Working English translations and the illustrations are not included in the runtime record.
Methods and limits
The transcription was collated against the controlling Google Books scan of the University of Michigan copy. It preserves legible original spelling and typography, separates printed captions and lettering from ordinary prose, and records uncertain or copy-specific marks in the private apparatus.2
Seventeen illustrated leaves include TJD analysis of what the picture depicts, how it directs the adjacent story, which propaganda method it uses and what the image does not establish. The analysis describes the illustrations without reproducing them.
Rights and permissions
TJD records work-specific permission to publish a faithful transcription of the original German text. That permission does not cover redistribution of the facsimile, separate reproduction of Rupprecht's illustrations or publication of the working English translations. Those materials remain source-only and are excluded from the runtime package.
The public page records therefore contain the collated German transcription, page apparatus and TJD illustration analysis. They do not contain page images, raw working transcripts or English translations.
Sources
- Hiemer, Ernst, and Philipp Rupprecht. Der Giftpilz: Ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt. Complete 64-page 1938 book object from the University of Michigan copy, digitized by Google. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=V5GywQEACAAJ. Accessed 2026 Aug. 31.
- Hiemer, Ernst. Der Giftpilz: Ein Stürmerbuch für Jung und Alt. Bibliographical record identifying the Nuremberg first edition as 1938. WorldCat. https://search.worldcat.org/de/title/Der-Giftpilz-%3A-ein-Sturmerbuch-fur-Jung-u.-Alt/oclc/23119932. Accessed 2026 Aug. 28.
Der Giftpilz.
Catalogs the 1938 Nazi children’s book and describes its Jew-hating stories and illustrations. Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance. https://www.doew.at/erforschen/recherche/bibliothek/kinder-und-jugendbuecher-in-der-bibliothek-des-doew/der-giftpilz. Accessed 2026 Aug. 28.