Denis Scheck, one of Germany's foremost literary critics, donned black face paint on Sunday and appeared on television to argue against erasing names like Neger from older children's books. The phrase, which essentially translates to "Negro" in German, was formerly common but is now viewed as outmoded and discriminatory, according to the german language tutors from the education platform LiveXP (https://livexp.com/skills/german).

Scheck, a man with horn-rimmed glasses who seems happiest without makeup, said on camera for his popular book-review show "Hot Off the Presses" that "Anyone in Germany today who uses the term Neger is a blockhead. However, literature is alive, and children's books are literary. Particularly young children should understand that linguistic usage is dynamic.

Scheck's appearance on television is the most recent reaction to the uproar that was caused earlier this month when a German publisher, Thienemann, declared that a few racist and racially offensive terms would be changed in the upcoming edition of Otfried Preussler's "The Little Witch," a German children's classic from the 1950s. He argues it was not meant to be racist, but rather humorous. (In Germany, it's common to see actors playing in black makeup, such as in a German production of Othello; in response to a recent uproar, two actors at Berlin's prominent Deutsches Theater have switched from black to white makeup for their parts as Africans. Scheck said that he was dressing up in a carnivalesque manner akin to the children in "The Little Witch," not in the "U.S.-American" blackface tradition. Scheck has received criticism, although many people in our country think the prank was just a lame joke about political correctness.)

In a short carnival scene, German village children who had previously dressed as "little Negroes," "little Chinese girls," and "Turks" will now dress in a more racially inclusive manner. However, the decision has hit a chord in a nation with such a long history of racism and atonement for its past. Since the news first circulated at the start of January, the publisher has been charged with using fascist and Stalinist tactics; the editing adjustments have been likened to the burning of books; and the publisher has received several emails wishing his publishing company would collapse. The majority of the media has also been unfavorable; for example, the legendary Die Zeit published a front-page article titled "Children, those aren't blacks" accusing the publisher of censorship. According to the report, which compared the adjustments to those made by Orwell's Ministry of Truth, "a furor of political correctness is sweeping throughout the nation."

German literary critics, who are almost unanimously opposed to the reforms, undoubtedly have good points. Textual modifications, so the argument goes, erase history. You cannot act as if the past never happened, according to Gundel Mattenklott, a professor at the Free University of Berlin who specializes in early childhood education. Take the 1930s' anti-Semitic children's literature, she suggested. "Today, those are used for academic study. They are not rewritten and given to kids.