The book burning in Germany on May 10, 1933, was a significant event orchestrated by the Nazi regime. It took place largely in Berlin, but similar events occurred in other cities across Germany. The Nazis, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, organized the burning of books deemed “un-German,” including those written by Jewish, communist, socialist, and other dissenting authors.
The goal of the book burning was to suppress ideas that contradicted Nazi ideology and to exert control over culture and education. The burning of books symbolized the suppression of intellectual freedom and the persecution of those who opposed the Nazi regime. It was a chilling precursor to the broader censorship and oppression that characterized the Nazi era. This event remains a stark reminder of the dangers of censorship and the importance of safeguarding intellectual freedom.
On 10 May 1933, National Socialist students organised book burnings at universities all over Germany. These actions were symbolic, directed against everything that the Nazis felt did not belong in Germany. Books by Jewish, left-wing, or pacifist writers such as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Erich Maria Remarque went up in flames. Students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books.
The students sought to purify German literature of “foreign,” especially Jewish, and other immoral influences.
As early as two weeks before, American organizations like the American Jewish Congress knew of the planned book burnings and launched protests. With her books slated for the bonfires, Helen Keller confronted German students in an open letter: “History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.” Similarly, novelist Sherwood Anderson, best-selling author Faith Baldwin, scriptwriter Erwin Cobb, and Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis declared solidarity with the banned writers and publicly protested the book burnings. The next day, and in the weeks following, there was a massive reaction in the world press, especially since many other German university towns imitated this infamous act. German newspapers reported, in triumph, that Germany was beginning to purge itself of the alien and decadent corrupters of the German spirit, and newspapers and magazines abroad, from as far away as China and Japan, responded in surprise and shock. Even then, some knowledgeable journalists recalled the prediction of the poet Heinrich Heine, who had said a century earlier, “Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.”
In the effort to synchronize the literary community, Goebbels had a strong ally in the National Socialist German Students’ Association (Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, or NSDStB). German university students were among the vanguard of the early Nazi movement, and in the late 1920s, many filled the ranks of various Nazi formations. The ultra-nationalism and antisemitism of middle-class, secular student organizations had been intense and vocal for decades. After World War I, many students opposed the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) and found National Socialism a suitable vehicle for their political discontent and hostility.
Not all book burnings were on May 10, as the German Student Association had planned. Some were postponed a few days because of rain, others, based on local chapter preference, took place on June 21, the summer solstice, a traditional date for bonfire celebrations in Germany.
And yet again history repeats itself.
Sources
https://www.annefrank.org/en/timeline/145/book-burning-at-german-universities/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/10/nazi-book-burnings-in-germany-may-1933
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goebbels-burnings/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning
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