Photographs of Nazi Book Burning appear in many textbooks. These images seem to illustrate many of the Nazi’s core ideals – hatred of modernism; antisemitism; and a desire to eliminate any ideas that contradicted their own. However, it is important to see these images as part of the propaganda campaigns by the Nazi leadership. The burning of books was a public staged act, a symbolic event that was spread through the new media of radio and film.
Which books were
chosen was also a symbolic act. The authors were chosen as examples of who the new Nazi leaders found dangerous or undesirable. Book burning was not an attempt to eliminate books or reading, but rather it was a clear visual image of an action that had a long tradition in German history. From the medieval book burnings of the Inquisition, Martin Luther’s burning of papal bulls in 1517, nineteenth century student nationalistic movement to public burnings of the hated Treaty of Versailles in 1919, book burning was an easily understood symbolic event by and of the German people.
From its inception, the young Nazi party leadership was obsessed with their war on what they considered harmful influences on the German people, as Hitler had expounded in Mein Kampf. On March 13, 1933, Josef Goebbels was named by Adolf Hitler as the new “Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda.” This added book and media censorship as one of the core goals of the growing Nazi party. Targeting culture is a necessity for dictatorial control.
Like many Nazi party directed activities, at first there was very little control by a central authority. Surprisingly perhaps, the wave of book burnings and purging of authors and subjects were directed by unlikely sources – students, teachers, and librarians. Beginning in early 1933, the German student organization “Deutsche Studentenschaft” began to organize their blacklists of “harmful and undesirable literature.” A librarian, Wolfgang Hermann, lent his skills to create master lists of suggested books to be purged. This list was published on March 26, 1933, and by May 6, 1933, groups of students in major German college and university cities had begun to purge, steal and burn books. Hermann’s first blacklist consisted of 12 authors; in one year the blacklist grew to 4,100 titles. Bookstores, public libraries and private citizens also handed over many titles and authors that they felt were offenses against “the German spirit.” On April 6, 1933, the Nazi German Student Association proclaimed a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit,”
On May 6, 1933, students at the Berlin School of Physical Education [Hochschule für Leibesübungen] raided the Institute for Sexual Research [Institut für Sexualwissenschaft] in Berlin and plundered its library. The Institute had been founded in 1919 by the gay Jewish physician Magnus Hirschfeld, who had devoted the better part of his career to enlightening the public about homosexuality and fighting for greater rights for homosexuals. The Institute for Sexual Research was dedicated to the exploration of a variety of sexual topics, including sexually transmitted diseases, marital problems, abortion, and homosexuality. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the National Socialists were quick to target it.
Beginning at nightfall on May 10, trucks laden with thousands of books taken from Berlin-area public, state and university libraries converged on the Opernplatz (now Bebelplatz). Fritz Hippler1, as the leader of the National Socialist German Students' League (NSDStB) for Berlin-Brandenburg, delivered the opening speech at the Berlin book burning held at Opernplatz. While the exact text of Hippler's speech is not readily available, contemporary accounts indicate that he set the ideological tone for the event, emphasizing the purge of "un-German" literature and aligning the act with Nazi ideals. Following his
address, student representatives threw books into the bonfire, each accompanied by a "Feuerspruch" or "fire oath," denouncing the targeted works as contrary to German value. Members of Nazi student groups and the SA tossed the books onto waiting wooden biers and set them afire in a huge "funeral pyre of the intellect." Other members paraded with torches chanting the Feuersprüche, the declarations of the cultural and intellectual war they intended to wage. The book burnings were not simply about destroying paper and ink; they were about silencing dissent, rewriting history, and reinforcing ideological conformity. Thousands of volumes by Jewish authors, socialists, pacifists, and critics of Nazism were thrown into bonfires. These acts were not isolated expressions of student activism but rather the culmination of a larger campaign orchestrated by the National Socialist German Students’ League, with the full endorsement of the Nazi regime. The flames that consumed the works of Freud, Marx, Einstein, Erich Maria Remarque, and hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish (but not Nazi sympathizers).
In Bonn, Gottingen, Heidelberg, Munich, and other cities throughout Germany, Nazi youth performed similar ceremonies, mostly aimed at "cleansing" public, church, and other types of community lending libraries of books and journals thought to be "un-German." Against this backdrop, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels gave a short speech announcing the end of Jewish intellectual influence and proclaiming that a new Germany would rise from the ashes: a Germany remade in the Nazi's image.
The response from the international community was swift and profound. Authors, politicians, scientists, and activists around the world decried the attack on intellectual freedom. Albert Einstein, already in exile, warned of the bro
ader implications of such actions. Helen Keller, whose books were among those burned, sent a scathing public letter to the German students, denouncing their hatred. Counter-protests immediately sprang across American cities, and the American media responded with shock and warnings about what the Nazi Party would do in the future to further push for German purity. American Jewish leaders, who were attempting to sound the alarm about the Nazi Party, organized protests and marched against the “culture war” against the destruction of “un-German” culture. In New York City, over 100,000 people marched in opposition to the actions of the Nazi Party.
But, book censorship was just the beginning. By the end of July 1933, Hitler was in complete control of the government, and the Nazis were the only legal political party in Germany. They had created the first concentration camps, restricted the freedoms of speech and of the press, enforced boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses, and had begun a sterilization campaign of citizens the new government considered genetically undesirable. The “Reich Office for the Promotion of German Literature,” beginning on March 25, 1934, was responsible for monitoring German printed publications.
The control of information “for the good of the people” has a long and complex history in almost every society and every period in human history. The enduring issues that surround censorship and control have only increased in modern times, as the massive amount of information has been coupled with a huge increase in information technology. If we are aware of the organizations and individuals, official or unofficial, that threaten the free flow of information in any society, we can help defend against and build barriers against the constant threats to any free society.
