The Nazis’ book burning campaign

Submitted by Matthew on 8 May, 2013 - 5:43

Eighty years ago this week — 10 May, 1933 — organised book burnings took place in university towns throughout Germany.

The objects of this literary auto-da-fe were the writings of anti-war, Jewish, socialist and liberal authors, both German and non-German.
The Nazis (NSDAP) had been in power since the end of January. In the following three months one and a half million new members had flooded into the party. A ban on new members had had to be imposed on 1 May in order to protect its ranks from “dilution”.
State and party organs had been merged into a single apparatus of repression which set about the systematic elimination of all opposition and targeted first and foremost the German labour and Communist movements, alongside of attempts to organise boycotts of Jewish businesses.
But the book-burnings and the campaign which preceded them, were not organised at the behest of the government or NSDAP. They were an initiative of the Deutsche Studentenschaft (DS), the German Students Association.
The DS had been dominated by ultra-nationalist politics. In 1931 this had resulted in the election of NSDAP member Gerhard Kruger as DS president, with 44.4% of the votes.
After the Nazis had come to power Kruger moved quickly to demonstrate the DS’s value to the new regime. On 6 April the DS issued a circular to all its local affiliates announcing the launch of a new campaign:
“In the light of the odious agitation by foreign Jewry the DS is planning a four-week campaign: in opposition to the corrosive effects of the Jewish spirit, and in support of an outlook and emotion in German writing which manifests the consciousness of the German people.”
“The campaign begins on 12 April, with the public display of ‘Twelve Theses Against the Un-German Spirit’ and ends on 10 May with public rallies in all German towns where there are universities.”
Another circular issued two days later went into more detail about the campaign. Public burnings of “corrosive Jewish writings” were to be organised. Students were urged to “cleanse” their own collections of any such works, to check the bookshelves of their acquaintances, and to “free public libraries of any such material.”
Four days later the campaign was launched by the DS’s publication of its “Twelve Theses Against the Un-German Spirit”, distributed both as a leaflet and as a poster attached to the doors of university buildings (in the “tradition” of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses). The Theses said:
“Our most dangerous opponent is the Jew, and whoever is in bondage to the Jew. The Jew can think only in Jewish. If he writes in German, then he lies.”
“We demand... Jewish works are to be published only in the Hebraic language. If they are published in German, then they are to be labelled as a translation.”
“For the most energetic action against misuse of the German [Gothic] script. The German script is for the use of Germans only.”
“We demand from the German student the will and the ability needed to overcome Jewish intellectualism and the manifestations of liberal decay in German spiritual life ...”
“We demand the selection of students and professors on the basis of the certainty that their thinking is rooted in the German spirit. ...”
On 19 April the campaign against “un-German” literature was extended into a campaign against “un-German” professors and lecturers. Students were urged to denounce teaching staff who had “spoken abusively of national leaders, the movement of national awakening, and soldiers who had fought at the front” or whose “academic method (reflected) their liberal or, in particular, their pacifist opinions.”
Jews, former members of Communist Party organisations and former members of the Reichsbanner (paramilitary wing of the German social-democrats) were particular targets of boycotts, disruption of their lectures, and physical attacks.
The second phase of the campaign began on 26 April: literary works deemed to be “corrosive” were stockpiled in preparation for burning. DS members, sometimes accompanied by the police and the Nazi SA, visited bookshops and libraries to check their stocks.
There were few or no public manifestations of opposition to the activities of the DS, especially from the university authorities. Where objections were raised, they did not necessarily challenge the politics of the DS’s campaign.
Although the lists used to decide what constituted “un-German” books varied from one town to another, they were all based on a list compiled by Wolfgang Hermann, a 29-year-old librarian based in Berlin.
Hermann had first worked as a librarian in Breslau, where he had lectured on the “poisoning” of local libraries by “liberalism and communism”, and had ensured that NSDAP newspapers were stocked in the libraries’ reading rooms. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP .
After the Nazis’ seizure of power he was appointed head of the newly formed “Committee for a New Order in Berlin Municipal and Popular Libraries”. Its role was to take forward the struggle against “cultural Bolshevism” and impose “a ban on the lending of Bolshevik, Marxist and Jewish literature.”
Hermann list of works were grouped under headings, such as “Belletristic Literature”, “Art”, “History” and “Miscellaneous”. Herman had “only” intended that books in his lists should be removed and replaced by “healthier” literature. But once he had passed on his list to the DS, in their hands it became a list of books for ritualistic burning.
In fact, although the DS used Hermann’s list local affiliates could use their own discretion in deciding which books to select. As one speaker put in at the Bonn book-burning of 10 May: “If one book too many is thrown onto the fire tonight, then that is nowhere near as harmful as one book too few... For all that is healthy will rise again of its own accord.”
The DS was backed not only by their academic staff, the police and the SA, but also by the “Newspaper of the German Book Trade” and the “Association of German Librarians”.
By early May the DS campaign had proved so successful, in terms of the number of students that it had been able to mobilise, that the Nazi government gave it its official backing.
The government had initially kept a distance from the campaign. The boycott of Jewish shops which it had organised on 1 April had been a failure. It was anxious not to be seen to be backing another high-profile but unsuccessful campaign.

But on 9 April a letter was sent to the DS on behalf of Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels:
“The Minister is prepared to make a speech at the (book) burning on 10 May, taking place at midnight on the Opera Square, Unter den Linden (Berlin).”
The same day the DS issued a circular, signed by Kruger and his colleague Hans Karl Leistritz, which provided its local affiliates with a list of slogans to be recited by DS members while throwing the banned books onto the fires. The slogans issued by the DS included:
“Against class struggle and materialism, for one united people and idealism! I put to the flame the writings of Marx and Kautsky.”
“Against decadence and moral decay, for discipline and morality in family and state! I put to the flame the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser and Erich Kastner.”
“Against intellectual vagrancy and political treason, for dedication to people and state! I put to the flame the writings of Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster”
“Against a soul-corroding over-evaluation of human instincts, for the nobility of the human soul! I put to the flame the writings of Sigmund Freud.”
“Against journalism of a democratic-Jewish character which is alien to the people, for responsible co-operation in the task of national reconstruction! I put to the flame the writings of Theodor Wolff and Georg Bernhard.”
“Against literary treason against the soldiers of the World War, for the education of the people in the spirit of militarism! I put to the flame the writings of Erich Maria Remarque.”
“Against insolence and insubordination, for respect and reverence for the immortal German popular spirit! Consume too, flames, the writings of Tucholsky and Ossietsky.”
Heinrich Mann, brother of Thomas Mann, was Jewish, anti-war, and an outspoken critic of fascism and social conformism. Glaeser had been a critic of German society and a Stalinist fellow-traveller but in later years became a Nazi sympathiser.
Kastner’s writings had attacked militarism and social bigotry, but he too was later criticised for remaining in Nazi Germany. Foerster was another outspoken critic of German militarism.
Wolff and Berhard were both Jewish, liberal, and defenders of democratic rights in their journalism. Remarque was the author of the anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front.
Tucholsky and Ossietsky were the two most prominent socially engaged journalists of the Weimar Republic. Tucholsky had left Germany in 1924 and was repeatedly taken to court in his absence for his writings. He committed suicide in 1935. Ossietsky had been arrested by the Nazis as early as February 1933 and subsequently died of ill-treatment at their hands.)
The following day the DS staged its ritualistic book-burnings in more than 60 towns, with reports of the biggest ones broadcast live by radio. Where they had to be postponed as a result of bad weather, the book-burnings continued to be organised into late May and June.
The works of some of the greatest names of German contemporary literature were reduced to ashes: Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ben Traven, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Zweig, Ernst Toller, Alfred Doblin, Anna Seghers, Johannes Becher...
So too were the writings of selected foreign authors : John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Barbusse, Maxim Gorki, Upton Sinclair, Ilya Ehrenburg, Isak Bebel...
Speaking at the Berlin book-burning Goebbels was ecstatic about the success of the campaign.
“When the National Socialist movement conquered power on 30 January this year,” he announced, “we could not know at that time that Germany could be cleansed so quickly and so radically.” The book-burning, he continued, marked the end of “the age of an exaggerated Jewish intellectualism” and “the breakthrough of the German revolution”.
These were neither the first nor the last book-burnings organised by the Nazis.
In March and April of 1933, when the offices of trade unions, the SPD (German Labour Party) and the Communist Party had been seized by the Nazis, their libraries had been publicly burnt.
“Kristallnacht” — the anti-Jewish pogrom of 1938 — saw the public burning of synagogues’ libraries. And when Germany invaded Austria the same year an “Anschluss”-book-burning was staged in Salzburg.
Following the outbreak of war, libraries were also publicly burnt after the German occupation of France, Poland and parts of the Soviet Union. In Alsace-Lorraine French books were ritualistically burnt as part of an “Entwelschungsakition” (de-foreignification action).
Many of the authors whose writings were burnt on 10 May had already fled Germany. Others went into exile soon afterwards, although some who made the mistake of fleeing to the Soviet Union were subsequently imprisoned and executed by the Stalinist regime.
Only a few of the writers remained in Germany, either dropping out of literary activity or, in some cases, going over to the side of the Nazis — “literary war criminals” as they were called by one of the exiled authors.

Some responded defiantly. Ernst Toller, President of the short-lived post-war Bavarian Soviet Republic, had been sentenced to five years in prison. Out of solidarity with his fellow prisoners he had rejected a pardon and insisted on serving the full sentence.
Toller turned up at the international PEN congress held in Dubrovnik (Croatia) two months after the book-burnings. The German delegation — “cleansed” by the NSDAP regime and Nazi-loyal to a man — had walked out of the congress even before Toller had begun his speech:
“I am speaking as an author not against Germany but against all power throughout the world. During the world war I fought on the German side. Only when I recognised that war was a disgrace did I rebel.”
“... What did the German PEN Club do against this act of destruction (the book-burnings)? What has the German PEN Club done against the ousting of the most outstanding German professors and men of letters?”
“What has the German PEN Club done for artists prevented from performing in Germany? What has the German PEN Club done in the cases of well-known painters who today cannot work in German academies?”
“Millions of people in Germany may neither speak nor wrote freely. I am talking for those millions who, today, have no voice.”
“We are living in an era of nationalistic madness, a madness of race, of hate. Madness rules the time, cruelty the people. Let us not be deceived. The voice of the soul, the voice of humanity, is only noticed by people in power when it serves as a front for their political purposes... Let us conquer the fear that crushes and humbles us. We fight in many ways. But may there be one way where, though we stand on opposite sides, each of us dreams of a utopia in which freedom from barbarism, lies, social injustice and slavery will prevail.”

However many books the Nazis burnt, they could not silence the voices of the “un-German spirit”.

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