THREAD Nazi Book Burnings

On this day #otd in 1933 Nazi-supporting students in 19 university towns organised mass burnings of books that were deemed ‘un-German’.

Far from being spontaneous, it was a well-planned provocation & part of broader Nazi cultural revolution

Today is also anniversary of the founding of the Nazi German Labour Front (DAF) in 1933 which forcibly replaced all independent trade unions.

It was led by Robert Ley, corrupt & incompetent alcoholic who would eventually commit suicide while awaiting trial at Nuremberg in 1945

First book burning was in Heidelberg on March 12 when Nazi stormtroopers raided trade union centre in Heidelberg & made a small bonfire outside the building of Marxist & left wing literature.

This was part of vicious crackdown on independent organised working class trade unions

In March 1933 Goebbels appointed a librarian Wolfgang Hermann to create a list of books which were considered typically Jewish, Marxist, Bolshevik or ‘un-German’.

He worked with a committee to identify the books & eventually passed list to German student union (DSt) run by Nazis

DSt issued placards with ‘12 theses against un-German spirit’ which called for ‘purification of German language & literature’.

Campaign was also explicitly antisemitic identifying Jews as ‘the enemy’ & decrying ‘Jewish intellectualism & liberal manifestations of decay’

Throughout April students from DST searched libraries & bookshops to identify ‘un-German’ books.

Police stood idly by as tens of thousands of books were removed from libraries & booksellers were intimidated into giving up stock. Shamefully lots of librarians aided the process

On May 6th Nazi thugs ransacked libraries of Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, (Institute of Sexology), one of world’s primary research centres on LGBT & sexuality run by Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish gay man. Over 20,000 books were taken away to be burnt over next few days

Final blacklist supplied to DSt had 131 authors, 94 German speakers & 37 translated foreign authors.

It included well-known literary figures like Brecht, Hemingway, Heinrich Mann, John Dos Passos Upton Sinclair & Stefan Zweig as well as Adler, Bauer, Bebel, Bukharin, Lenin, Marx

On May 10, Nazi philosopher Alfred Bäumler, new Prof. of Political Pedagogy, gave his inaugural speech at Friedrich-Wilhelm University, Berlin to an audience of student stormtroopers & ended with an exhortation not to wait to ban ‘un-German’ books but to burn them immediately

That evening there was a torchlit parade by students & 20,000 books were unloaded on a pyre outside the Opera. SA & SS bands played & 40,000 spectators watched the ceremony which was also recorded to be replayed on newsreels

9 students were allocated books in 9 categories & condemned books to the pyre with appropriate Nazi oratory:

‘Against the class struggle & materialism, for a people’s community & an idealistic lifestyle! I hand to the flames the writings of Marx & Kautsky’ was first ‘dedication’

Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels addressed Berlin book-burning with usual antisemitic hate

“Age of exaggerated Jewish intellectualism has come to an end”

“Illuminated by many flames this should be an oath! The Reich and the Nation and our leader Adolf Hitler Heil!”

While much of focus on May 1933 book-burnings is on Berlin, there were numerous other book burnings across German university towns.

Not a single university spoke out against the book burnings.

Through whole of 1933, there were 93 book-burnings in 70 German cities.

There was also opposition from abroad. On May 10 protests took place in dozens of American cities.

H.G. Wells established the Library of Burned Books which opened in Paris in 1934. It housed copies of all books burned or banned. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/may/12/german-library-burnt-books-1934

Attempt in book burnings to remove Jewish influence from German life can be seen as start of far more punitive measures against German Jews & then the Jews of Europe culminating in horrors of the Holocaust.

“When they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.” Heine

Book burnings are memorialised in Bebelplatz in Berlin with ‘The Empty Library’ a moving artwork which is set into the cobblestones of the plaza & contains a display of empty underground bookcases.

In Frankfurt am Main there is a plaque commemorating the book burnings there

Finally a hat tip to this excellent book, ‘Harmful & Undesirable: Book Censorship in Germany’ (2016) by Guenter Lewy which provided much of the information in this thread. /ENDS

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