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The Week in Germany: Current Affairs

May 9, 2008

Germany Remembers Authors of Books Burned by Nazis

Commemoration: German President Horst Köhler (at left), with wife Eva Luise, and Academy of Arts President Klaus Staeck (at right) both spoke at the ceremony in Berlin honoring the wronged authors.
© picture-alliance/ dpa

The flames shot into the night sky when university students in Berlin and other German cities tossed thousands of books onto bonfires to purge Nazi Germany of "un-German" ideas. The ceremonial burning of books written by Jews, communists and "degenerates" on May 10, 1933 took place less than four months after Adolf Hitler came to power.

Now Germany is hosting a series of lectures, exhibitions, discussions and readings to mark the 75th anniversary of the unsavory event. The trauma of several book burnings, conducted in city squares and cheered on by Nazi crowds, runs deep in Germany, inspiring politicians to condemn censorship.

The Academy of Arts in Berlin held a commemoration ceremony on May 9 during which German President Horst Köhler was the keynote speaker.

He called for "freedom of the arts" to be upheld worldwide. "Whoever tries to prohibit books, films, theatrical shows or caricatures is on the wrong road," he said. Germany's past experience of this obliged it to stand up for freedom of opinion in other parts of the world today, he added.

Actors, authors and schoolchildren read from the works of some of the around 130 authors whose works went up in flames, among them Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Mann.

On May 10, Berlin's renowned Humboldt Library and the Spanish Cultural Institute, Cervantes, jointly hosted readings and recitals from the burned works. This event symbolically took place on the same square where some 40,000 Nazi supporters gathered three-quarters-of-a-century ago to witness the book burning in the German capital.

Today an underground memorial marks the spot on what is now August Bebel Platz. Conceived as an "empty library", visitors can view it through a glass window built into the pavement.

"It is the right monument in the right place," according to Klaus Staeck, president of the Academy of Arts.

Records show that at least 35,000 books were burned in 22 cities between May and August 1933 in an event unheard of since the Middle Ages. The students, who were at the vanguard of the Nazi movement, compiled blacklists of undesirable authors and circulated them to public and private libraries. In addition to German-speaking authors, works of American writers Jack London, Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller were also consigned to the flames.

While the names and works of many of the targeted authors are still popular today, others like German writers Maria Leitner and Georg Hermann have virtually been forgotten. This shows that in some ways the book burning had a long-term effect, according to Olaf Zimmermann, managing director of the German Council of Culture.

"Yes, it's disgraceful, but the sad fact is that many authors whose books landed on the bonfires have faded into obscurity," he said, adding that passages from some of their works will be read out loud at the weekend events.

Source: dpa

Links:

Academy of Arts (in German)

Deutscher Kulturrat / German Council of Culture (in German)

Federal President's Website

More about German Literature (Germany.info)

Remembering Brecht 50 Years On (TWIG, August 18, 2006)

Lübeck Honors Thomas Mann (TWIG, August 12, 2005)

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