The Opernplatz, May 10.1933

Not only did the Nazi Party create the Holocaust they also created its predecessor, the Bibliocaust, which is said to have been their inspiration for the cremation of live Jews in ovens. Millions of books were destroyed by Hitlers men and the blame was often laid squarely on others. One example of this was on February 27 1933, when the Reichstag, the German parliament building was burnt along with all of its archives, and the blame was placed on the Communist party.

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

The Burning of the Library of Congress

Night view: Library of Congress.

When I looked through the books on Witch Hunts, I realised that I had overshot the
mark. The books were about burning people, not books, apart from the odd
herbalist or two that was tied to a stake and burnt with their books, which meant I had to change all my plans again. One of the difficulties that I have found with this topic is that the incidence of book burnings over the centuries - AD and BC - ,is so high that it is impossible to make mention of all of them in a relatively short project such as this. Wikipedia itemises many of these incidents in a list format. For purposes of this project, I have focussed on the burnings that stand out and grab my attention more so than others. One of those is the ...

Burning of the Library of Congress:
In 1812, the Library of Congress consisted of about 3,076 volumes and some fifty three maps. Patrick Magruder, a Washington newspaperman and former congressman was
the Librarian of Congress, a position which went hand in hand with that of the Clerk of House of Representatives. The year 1812, is significant as a) under the direction of Magruder the library released its first catalogue and b) Congress authourised the invasion of Canada by President James Madison. The catalogue classified the books by genre, price & number of copies available.

On April 27, 1813 American soldiers marched on what is now known as Toronto and
burnt the Parliament and the legislative library. In retaliation, the English
arrived in Chesapeake Bay in August 1814. Patrick Magruder had put one J.T. Frost
in his place as he was to old to be called up for military service. Apparently Frost was one of only a few government employees to stay at his post as the English advanced toward the city. He evacuated hundreds of books and documents and when he did leave, was only a few hours ahead of the invading army. The general of the British Army at the time Robert Ross, ordered that everything that represented the culture of the enemy be destroyed. In this particular case this meant the White House, the Treasury and the Capital. The Library of Congress was torched on August 24, 1814.

Thomas Jefferson. Image sourced from appalachianconservative.wordpress.com

At least 2,600 books were burnt and once the war was over the library had to be rebuilt. Thomas Jefferson, suggested the government purchase his own collection of some 6,487 books. This they did for the sum of $23,950 USD. A new catalogue was made and this was divided by subject headings. The library grew and in 1851 contained 55,000 items, 35,000 of which were incinerated in a fire at Christmas time. This incarceration included two thirds of Jeffersons collection.

In 2008, the Library of Congress boasted some 29 million books in 470 languages, 56
million manuscripts, 500,000 microfilm documents, 4.8 million maps and 2.7 million
recordings, not to mention e-resources.

LOC Thomas Jefferson building - aerial view.

REFERENCES

BOOKS:
Baez,F 2008, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books:From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq , Atlas and Co, New York.

WEBSITE:
Cole, J. Y 2006, Jefferson's Legacy: A Brief History of the Library of Congress, viewed 3 May 2010, http://www.loc.gov/loc/legacy/

The Bishop of Yucatan

This week I focussed on editing, gadgeting, adding blogs to follow and so forth. I moved my Clustermap to the left hand panel, added some fish and discovered that one of the restrictions of gadgets is that they can go in the top, bottom and left hand pane only. I would have preferred to have the fish halfway through each post. One of the problems I have encountered with this particular template is that alot of its elements cannot be changed, such as the background colour; moving the whole page over to the right or moving the titles down one or two lines.

I added Catalogablog as a blog to follow as I find David Bigwood really interesting and I love his list of personal interests: Folk Dance, Morris Dance, Contra Dance etc. At some stage I intend to browse his recommended blogs and articles.

I found three reference books in the Boroondara Libraries catalogue for my next posting on Witch Hunting, which are as follows:
Whores of the Devil: Witch-Hunts and Witch-Trials, by Erik Durschmied
The Witch Hunts: A history of the witch persecutions in Europe and North America, by Robert Thurston
Witches and Witch-hunts: A History of Persecution, by Milton Meltzer
Therefore I decided to spend my time delving into these and to spend less time on the destruction of the Mayan Codices, however there is a tale to tell and a brief outline runs along the following lines:

Many books were burnt by priests in pre Hispanic South America ie. Modern day Mexico and Central America, (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize). The main objective of the priests was to indoctrinate them with their Christian belief system. The missionaries believed that everything in the books of the indigenous peoples was magic art, charms and superstition. In fact, these books contained information on their knowledge of plants and animals, their understanding of the seasons - the secrets if their land - and their ancient past. They had two calendars, one solar and one ritual, their writing consisted of glyphs and their books were codices - folding books written on the inner bark of certain trees.

In 1562 AD Bishop Diego de Landa, the Bishop of Yucatan, happened upon the discovery of idols in a cave. He perceived this as an act of treachery as he had been led to believe that he had converted the indigenous peoples of Yucatan to Christianity. The Bishop had gained the trust of the people and by doing so had gained access to their sacred texts - many of which were written on deerskin. Bishop de Landa reacted to the findings of the idols in a vicious manner, holding an Inquisition at a place called Mani where he burnt many, many codices. The bloodshed continued and apparently the Franciscan monks whipped themselves into a frenzy killing, crucifying, burning idols and books and so forth. The Spanish continued the destruction and burnings, into the 1600's, in spite of the civilisation being in obvious decline, as they were also convinced that the codices contained superstitions. Enormous amounts of information were lost, in particular that which was considered to be sacred, which led to a tradition of oral recitation of texts by the wise men.

Only three of the codices remain in the modern day world and they are named as follows: the Dresden Codex, which is held in the Dresden State Library in Germany (this is the most elaborate of the surviving codices); the Madrid Codex held in the Museo de America in Madrid, Spain and the Paris Codex held in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The Grolier Codex surfaced in the 1970's, however its authenticity has never been satisfactorily established.


Maya civilization- image from the Dresden Codex (page 9). Adapted from the 1880 edition by Förstemann.

Click here for further information on the Codice
Copyright for this image has expired.

A related website, however not a reference for this research blog, is this one about Maya ruins, the link has been included more so out of interest as the photographs relate to the story above.

General information on book burnings across a number of centuries.

Pages from the Koran.

Near the end of the then ruling dynasty in China in 554 AD, the Emperor Yuan himself, set fire to the royal library of the time which was apparently very prestigious, containing some 140,000 books. Between 907 AD and 960 AD, the situation in China was extremely chaotic and as a result the destruction of libraries happened frequently. Sometimes, as in the case of Li Yui, this was to ensure thatthe books were burnt, rather than being handed over to his enemies - the song. In 1000 there were wars which eliminated thousands of books and the library in Kaifeng contained some 73,000 to 74,000 book

Sometimes books were burnt as civilisations fell, as in the case of Constantinople in 1453, which fell after a particularly vicious attack by the Turks in which women and children were also butchered. Manuscripts, churches and icons were also destroyed. In Ireland, books and monasteries fell victim to the relentless attacks of the Vikings who either threw them into the sea or burnt the libraries and monasteries which so often housed them - of course, they murdered monks as well. Monasteries disappeared and libraries in England and Ireland were left in tatters. The library of Crowland was reconstructed but a fire sadly occured in 1091, destroying everything.

A page from the Koran in Arabic.


The Talmud, a book of commentary by Rabbi's, on both the Bible and Jewish verse is one of the most persecuted books in history and was first burnt by the French Crown in the year 1242. The burning of Hebrew books was continued throughout the next few centuries until the 1500's and was almost successful in eradicating all Jewish books, however the invention of the printing press won out and Venice became a centre for the printing of Jewish books as it was very tolerant in those times. The Koran was also burnt in Spain in the 1500's and it was supported by the King and Queen of the time: Isabella I and Ferdinand V, who were advised primarily by Cisneros to eradicate a book of a different faith and concept of the world that had the power to galvanize an enemy. There's that power thing again.

Books, obviously, have been burnt on religious grounds by Muslims, Christians, Pagans and no doubt others in the belief that the other religion is blasphemous in comparison to that of their own faith. My main purpose this week was to present general information to fill in the time, spanning from the last post on the Library of Alexandria, through to the destruction of the Mayan culture, which I intend to look at in my next post.Whilst I relied heavily on Fernando Baez and his text A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, I also visited a few websites, which are referenced below. James Hannam has some great information about Burning Down Libraries, Magical and Prophetic Texts, Persecution of and by the Christians, the end of the Classical Age, the Loss of Literature, and the Preservation of Literature as well as his own Further Reading list. Likewise,I visited other websites but as they were not directly related to the history of the destruction of books they are not included ie. outlines of chronolgical historical dates in Ancient China.

Quaran C18th.

REFERENCES:
BOOKS:
Baez, F 2008, A Universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq, Atlas & Co, New York.

WEBSITES:
2010, Book burning, free online encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, viewed April 25 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning

James Hannam, 2003, Bede's Library, last revised 2009, viewed April 25, 2010 http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm

Burning of Books at the Library of Alexandria

There are so many differing and varied versions of the burning of the Alexandrian library, that one wonders whether anyone really knows what happened at all. However it does seem that there were a number of fires - possibly three, but more reliably one - at different times in history. One informative and relevant website that I came across on this topic, worthy of recommendation due to its content, was that of James Hannam - check out his website: ...so to the library at Alexandria...

The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, and after his death in 323BC his generals fought amongst themselves for pieces of his empire. One of the more successful was Ptolemy I from Macedonia, who thereby founded the Ptolemy dynastyat Alexandria. The early Ptolemy's were intellectual men and were very supportive of the libraries development and Ptolemy I, having his own intellectual interest, did what he could to attract intellectuals to the city. It seems that the early development of the library came about through one of these scholars, known as Demetrius of Phaleron, supported by Ptolemy I and subsequently Ptolemy II. The Ptolemy's apparently had a habit of borrowing original copies of books in order to have copies made, but neglected to return them. They also borrowed originals, had copies made and then returned the copies to Athens or wherever they had borrowed them from. Books onboard ships that came into the port were seized, copied and returned to the ships, but kept more often than not. So, by varying ways and means the library grew and brilliant intellectual and scholarly work was carried out there in a 'golden age' lasting for around three centuries.
Further information on the Library of Alexandria itself is available on these videos from Youtube:

Dr Carl Sagan on the Library at Alexandria


The Library of Alexandria


Again, reports vary as to what was actually held in the library, but it seems to have had around 400,000 scrolls in its holdings in 47/48 BC, when Julius Caesar, attacking Alexandria in a battle to take control of it, realised he was about to be cut off by the Egyptian fleet. Realising this would leave him trapped, Caesar ordered his soldiers to clear the wharves with fire and sent fire ships into the harbour. By doing so he was able to reduce the Egyptian fleet to ashes, however the fire spread to the nearby land and subsequently the great library caught fire. Other reports say that there were warehouses housing some 40,000 books at the docks and that these were what caught fire. Possibly these scrolls were new acquisitions for the library that had come into port and were awaiting delivery to the library.

There is little unanimity amongst historians and scholars as to finer details of events regarding the disappearance of this library, due largely to the fact that litte remains to tell the tale and that surviving references in literature appear to contracist one another. However, late in the third century AD somewhere around 391, it seems that the Emperor Theodosius and the patriach Theophilus successfully incited a mob to attack and burn the library. Their motives were Christian as they had been able to convert most of the subjects to Christianity and the contents of the library threatened those of the Bible. Likewise, they encouraged dictatorship and the eradication of ideas by burning books. Other sources say that this is not true and that it was the sister library at the Serapeum that was attacked and destroyed at this time, and that the main library at Alexandria was destroyed in 48 BC.

The story of the final fire at the library did not appear until the thirteenth century, which gives it credit as legend only, but runs along the lines of the Arab conqueror of Alexandria 'Amr' was approached by an unfrocked Christian priest who asked for the books of wisdom, given that they could be of no use to the Arabs. Amr wrote to the Caliph Omar, who replied that the books should be destroyed. The books were sent to the bath houses of Alexandria to fuel the baths and were still being burnt six months later.

Between 320 and 1303, according to Fernando Baez in his A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, there were at least twenty three earthquakes in Alexandria. In the summer of 365, he says that there was a very powerful tremor. Apparently hundreds of objects and pieces of column have been found in the port, by the team from Institut Europeen d'Archeologie Sous-Marine led by Franck Goddio, proving that parts of Alexandria sank and he offers this as one possible hypothesis on the disappearance of the Great Library.

Overall, an unrewarding week for me. For every piece of information that I located, I found another that disproved it and/or dismissed it as legend. It seems that we, the readers, find the legend and myth of the burning of a great library, housing all the knowledge of the world, quite enthralling and possibly it is our imaginations that fuel the whole story. Added to that the youtube video's would not upload. Screams.

REFERENCE LIST:

BOOKS:
Baez, F 2008, A Universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq, Atlas & Co, New York.
Macleod, R 2000, The Library of Alexandria: centre of learning in the ancient world, I.B Tauris, London
Canfora, L 1994, The Vanished library, Hutchinson Radius, London.

WEBSITES:
Direct links available in text.

The Burning of Books in Ancient China (213BC).

This week I visited TROVE. Trove is a new free search service based on Libraries Australia. It did not reveal much that was relevant to my blog topic, or that I found new and useful. However, it did return two of the books from my reference list above, when I searched under Book Burning, which affirmed my choice of them as references in the first place. I also went to Wikipedia pages, which I located not through Google, but through the American Library Association's (ALA) webpages. Again, I did not find any new information on them, that I had not already come across in the books. Nevertheless, the page that had information on the burying of scholars and burning of books in Ancient China is listed below as a reference.

Burying of Confucian scholars

For this week I am concentrating on these two books, as their content is so rich and relevant. Here is some of the information that I have found:
When you think about it, book burning is actually as old as books themselves, but ironically books, apparently, are very difficult to burn. Not only that, but they have a very strange habit of surviving. Matthew Fishburn, the authour of Book Burning, states that in his book The Book-Hunter,(1862),John Hill Burton wrote that books were burnt on large wooden stages and in spite of considerable effort, large readable masses were found in the embers. In the end, he says, it was found easier to burn the heretics themselves, than the books they wrote.


The Chinese Emporer burying the scholars.
Links to this page.

Whilst books (tablets, bamboo sheets, papyrus etc.) and record keeping materials relevant to the time were so often destroyed or smashed as rulers, kings and dynasties were conquered, the first record of a book burning that was sponsored by the state is attributed to Zhao Zheng, who became the leader of Qin in 246 BC. He later proclaimed himself to be emperor Shi Huangdi (First Emperor), a title which he felt gave testimony to his majesty. He then became known as Qin Shi Huang - first emperor of the state of Qin.

As an emperor, Qin Shi Huang was reputedly tyrannical and had absolute power, bribing,destroying and/or murdering anyone who opposed him. By his side was his faithful advisor Grand Councillor Li Si, who proposed that all historians records, other than those of their own state of Qin, be burnt. Consequently, in 213 BC, Qin Shi Huang approved the burning of all books with the exception of those on the topics of agriculture, medicine, forestry and prophecy. Funnily enough, the Emperor hid treatises on, meditation, shamanism and alchemy and protected writings on divination. Chinese books in this era were made from strips of bamboo and wood and in 2000, archaeologists in Hunan province unearthed 20,000 bamboo strips with ideograms on them revealing the history of Qin Shi Huang to the modern day world. Therefore, we now know that those who failed to burn their books after thirty days notice, or failed to deliver them to the emperors representatives to be burnt were sent to build the Great Wall of China, the construction of which this ruler is known to have begun.

As all the scholars respected Confucius, Qin Shi Huang had his works burnt as well, and sent men from house to house seizing and later burning mnay books at a bonfire. Famously, he also had around 460 scholars buried alive with their books at Xianyang, and their families suffered 'countless humiliations'. The Emporer created his own Imperial library which burnt to the ground in the civil wars to over throw his heirs that took place after his death.

REFERENCE LIST:
BOOKS:
Baez, F 2008, A Universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq, Atlas & Co, New York.
Fishburn, M 2008, Burning books, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Battles, M 2003, Library: An unquiet history, W.W. Norton, New York.

WEBPAGE:
2010, Book burning, free online encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, viewed April 2 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars

Introduction:

For my Research topic I have chosen the Burning of Books throughout the centuries, beginning with a quote from the "Mirror of the World" exhibition at the Victorian State Library - "The power or even perceived danger of the printed word is reflected in the fact that books have been regularly banned and burned". History has shown that when one nation or group attempts to dominate another, the first thing they aim to do is to erase all traces of the societal memory. This is done in order to reconstruct and remake the identity of the particular nation or group being overtaken and seems to come from a desire to acquire control over both a society and the individuals in it. It is also a way of asserting power and domination, by forcing the weaker group into submission, and exerting the dominant will - or in this case culture - over it, so as to ensure the old culture no longer exists. Book burning is also seen as a means of making a complete break from the past and starting afresh with a clean slate.


As a brief overview, it is beginning to look something like this:
History of Book Burning begins in Ancient China in 213 BC; Jewish Holy Books burnt 168 BC; Egyptian Alchemy books of Alexandria burnt in 292; Library of Antioch burnt in 364; Sibylline books burnt in 405; Libraries of Alexandria had fires in 392 and 640, however exact dates are not clear……continuing throughout history, selecting information on each burning ie. In ancient China scholars were buried alive along with the burning of their books!, etc, through to the present day (Nazi book burnings and, incredulously, the burning of Harry Potter books in America). However, I would like to keep it fluid and open to changing ideas, so do not have a set structure as yet.

Books located so far, in both Swinburne and City of Boroondara libraries are: A universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq by Fernando Baez; Burning Books by M. Fishburn; The Vanished Library by Luciano Canfora and An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. Citations as follows:

REFERENCE LIST:
BOOKS:
Baez, F 2008, A Universal history of the destruction of books: from ancient Sumer to modern Iraq, Atlas & Co, New York.
Fishburn, M 2008, Burning books, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Battles, M 2003, Library: An unquiet history, W.W. Norton, New York.
Canfora, L 1994, The Vanished library, Hutchinson Radius, London.
Macleod, R 2000, The Library of Alexandria: centre of learning in the ancient world, I.B Tauris, London

WEBSITES:
American Library Association, 2010, Book Burning, viewed on March 18,2010, http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/bookburning/bookburning.cfm
2010,Book burning, free online encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, viewed March 18 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning