Nazi Germany, also known as Third Reich, was ruled by Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1939 (Baranowski 172). The Nazi government aimed to assimilate German culture by manipulating the public mind. Due to the concern of roots in Jewish culture, Hitler attempted “to redefine culture by defining art” (Mosse 11). Among many other forms of literature and art, books were specifically turned into a target to be burned since the written word recorded the ideas from the human mind and were viewed as most powerful. The magical, fearful words on the page were reduced to ashes because the book burners feared the words may come alive (Bosmajian 32). On May 10th, 1933, students from the Nazi student organization at the behest of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, arranged burnings of 25,000 books thought to be written by Communists, Socialists, Liberals, Pacifists, Jews, and ones that were against the Nazi ideology (Stern 3). Rose claims that “books were burned at thirty German universities, mostly on or within a few days of 10 May 1933 but continuing until 21 June” (16). The Nazi regime’s decision to burn certain books corresponded with their ideology of totalitarianism, in which the state attempted to control every aspect of the society. The Nazi regime justified their own act by reciting the history of book burnings from “the Chinese book-burning of 221BC through Greek and Roman history to the later attempts of the Christian Church to destroy heathen and heretical writings” (Ritchie 628).
The authorities attempted to destroy un-German literature by regulating what kind of books Germans should not read. There was no resistance to burning books from the university authorities and faculties, the students, the libraries, bookstores, or publishers because they supported the new regime (Rose 15). These brainwashed German citizens feared to act against the Nazi regime although they were given limited choice in reading diverse types of books. For the Nazi regime, there was a need to institute a system of censorship, in which the Culture Chamber consistently updated black list of un-German books (Lehmann 12). While the Nazi regime claimed that German culture had been contaminated by alien influences, the choices given to many German artists led them to choose emigration (Huener and Nicosia 140). There was also the fear of house searches, and censorship policies were implemented to public and private libraries as well as bookstores (Rose 17). The Nazis seized the 8,000 volume library of a Viennese Jewish teacher because it contained condemned categories of “Jewish” and “free-thinking” literature (Rose 26). Therefore, the Nazi regime destroyed freedom of thought through censorship policies, resulting in the negligence of human rights for German readers.
Nazi book-burnings had negative consequences and impacts on the German readers. The burnings of books that conveyed objectionable ideas ultimately formed antagonistic views in the country outside of Germany. An example is given when Helen Keller’s books on behalf of socialism were included in the book burning while many other famous American authors and various American organizations began to launch protests and demonstrations (Stern 3). Moreover, Nikola von Merveldt juxtaposes two libraries built in 1934 after the incident of Nazi book-burning. The German Freedom library in Paris symbolized “the unity of the German immigrant community to the world,and intellectuals from around the world recognized its members as the true defenders of German culture” (Merveldt 525). Meanwhile, the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books published “a list of twenty banned authors, including Heinrich Heine, Ernest Hemingway, and Helen Keller, and called on all members and friends of the center to donate books or funds” (528). As it can be seen, these two libraries put an innovative amount of effort to restore limited Germans’ intellectual life. In 1941 during the World War II, other entertainments became rare and many German individuals sought comfort from traumatic war by reading (Haag 298). Some felt that there was “a little danger reading and re-reading enemy books not only for private diversion but also for the kinds of insight that might enable one to make some sense of an increasingly bloody conflict” (298). Despite the Nazi regime’s attempts to control the minds of Germans by burning books, the ideas were not completely eradicated.
Works Cited
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Bosmajian, Haig A. Burning Books. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Print.
Haag, John. “Gone With the Wind in Nazi Germany.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 73.2 (1989): 278-304. Print.
Huener, Jonathan, and Francis R. Nicosia. The Arts in Nazi Germany: Continuity, Conformity, Change. New York: Berghahn, 2006. Print.
Lehmann, Hartmut. Culture and Politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Germany. Washington: German Historical Institute, 1992. Print.
Merveldt, Nikola Von. “Books Cannot Be Killed by Fire: The German Freedom Library and the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books as Agents of Cultural Memory.” Library Trends 55.3 (2007): 523-35. Print.
Mosse, George L. Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1966. Print.
Ritchie, J. M. “The Nazi Book-Burning.” The Modern Language Review (1988): 627-643. Print.
Rose, Jonathan. The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2001. Print.
Stern, Guy. Nazi Book Burning and the American Response: Distinguished Lecture. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1991. Print.