The political police of the time in Germany ie. SS, Gestapo etc frightened people into burning books and they persecuted and terrorised authors and writers at the same time. A fervour began to take hold amongst the people, particularly the students and intellectuals. However, it was in May 1933 that things really came to a head. On May 5, 1933 students at the University of Cologne went to the library and took out every book written by a Jewish authour. Some hours later all of these books were burnt by them. After this the students went to private houses and publishers warehouses, reportedly confiscating books written by Jewish authours. This movement was seen as an act of national purification and other students, teachers and professors across Germany joined in.
German students preparing to burn books. Image sourced from Getty Images.com
There was a very respectable institution whose name when translated was the 'Institute for Sexual Research. On May 6, 1933 members of the Youth wing of the Nazi Party amongst others, removed around 10,000 books as well as letters, reports and confidential papers from their premises. On May 8 there were more reports of books being burnt and on May 10 the students, past and present, of the Association of German Students gathered forbidden books, including those taken from the Institute for Sexual Research. Added to this was material that had been removed from Jewish libraries and other centres in Germany, all of which was transported to the Opernplatz, (since renamed the Bebelplatz) a public square in Berlin. A bonfirethat burnt for hours and about 25,000 books were burnt. The burning of books was then repeated in many large cities in Germany. In Frankfurt, trucks were used to bring loads of books in for the fires and students formed human chains to get the books to the fires.
Interestingly, it was not just the works of Jewish authors that had the ire of Hitler and his Nazi party but the Masons as well. The destruction of books was extended to art as it was all seen as cultural purification, however the art was often stolen rather than destroyed. The destruction of books, libraries, synagogue libraries and so on, continued unabated and spread across Europe, and England. The conclusion to it all was that hundreds of thousand if not millions, of irreplacable books and historical documents, not to mention libraries were lost for all time in an attempt to totally erase the memory of the people.
The Memorial in the Bebenplatz Square. Image sourced from onejerusalem.com
In East Berlin a small, simple plaque served as a memorial, but this has now been replaced with a sculpture made by Micha Ullman. Ullmans design is a small room containing empty shelves, which are set into the ground underneath the cobblestones of the Bebelplatz square. The shelves are visible through a sheet of thick glass which is set into the square at street (footpath) level. Next to it is an unadorned plaque with a plain note regarding the book burning of May 10, 1933 when works by free writers, publishers, philosophers and scientists were burned in the square. It is said that from a distance it is difficult to know why people have gathered in the middle of the empty square and hard to know what it is on the ground before them, that they stare at.
My blogging process from the last post to this has been:
Rather alot of time wasted this week trying to insert photos, finally realising it is better to put them in the middle of paragraphs only, as otherwise the text moves all over the place. Likewise, selecting Large for size of the photograph made absolutely no difference when the post was published as they would then appear as small etc, etc. So, funny little photos for this blog. No difficulty in finding references for this subject as I race toward the end. My priority is what I ascertain to be quality references, as opposed to quantity or variety of format.
I can see that red flag waving in the distance. Yes, thats me you see, running towards it.
The Empty Library Memorial in the Bebenplatz Square. Image sourced from scrapbookpages.com
REFERENCES.
BOOKS:
Baez, F 2008, A Universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq, Atlas and Co, New York.
Fishburn, M 2008, Burning books, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Battles, M 2003, Library: An unquiet history, W.W.Norton, New York.
WEBSITES:
University of Arizona, 2006, When books burn, viewed on May 4 2010, http://library.arizona.edu./exhibits/burnedbooks/
2010, Book burning, free online encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, viewed May 5 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning
