Small History of the Toy in Dark Times

Abstract

Games, toys and games form an important part of our individual and collective identities, just as they have always been part of all cultures at all times. But what do ways of playing say about a society? In the last century, Walter Benjamin, living in Germany in dark times that witnessed the advance towards the seizure of power and destruction by Nazism, was one of the thinkers who left revealing writings on the practice of games and on allegorical ways of playing. The reflections of Benjamin and other thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, provide the backdrop for contemporary studies on the historiography and ideology of ways of playing, with emphasis on the collection put together by André Postert in “Kinderspiel, Glücksspiel, Kriegsspiel: Große Geschichte in kleinen Dingen 1900-1945” (Children's game, game of chance, war game: Great History in small things 1900-1945).