One of the oldest practices of censorship is the burning of books, or written documents. Book burning is often preformed as a ritualistic destruction of books or other written materials by fire and is also often made into a public event. It usually begins from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question. With the dawn of the Enlightenment, book burning became unfashionable and gained a reputation as a medieval tradition, a barbaric and anti-intellectual practice harboring back to the dark ages (Fishburn 7). Nevertheless it was still practiced after the Enlightenment, with probably the most famous instance being the Nazis book burnings of 1933.

In 1933 students throughout Germany burned what they viewed as “Un-German” literature (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Like most authoritarian regimes the Nazis movement enacted programs of culture cleansing through the destruction of cultural materials that were seen as a threat to their doctrines (Knuth 31). In order for a dictatorship to exercise absolute power all readings must be established as official or acceptable by the ruler/ruling party (Manguel 283). In the case of these 1933 events, anything deemed un-German by the Nazi regime was thrown into the fires of 1933.

Authorities strove to synchronize professional and cultural organizations with Fascist Nazi ideology and policy (Laqueur). In 34 university towns across Germany the May 10th “Action against the Un-German Spirit” elicited widespread newspaper coverage (Guarding Public Morality). Unlike other Nazi activities, the book burnings were covered extensively by the international community and publicized to the German population (Guarding Public Morality). In some cities, notably Berlin, radio broadcasts brought the speeches, songs, and ceremonial chants to the German public (Censorship in the Humanities). Professor Baeumler in Berlin claimed to crowds that they were witnessing a ban on poisonous thought and an intellectual renewal, rather than a destruction of intellectual freedom (Fishburn 33). What was so striking to the rest of the world was these acts against reason and intellectualism were happening at universities, institutions that ought to be places for such things to flourish.

Although according to “The Nazis Book-Burning”, by J. M. Ritchie, the precise account of who was responsible for it’s occurrence is not fully understood (627), whether it was the Nazi party itself that aroused these acts, or strictly students themselves is unclear; however, based on historical detail, the burnings are attributed as having grown out of student activism (Levy 79), with the approval of the Nazi party. National student organizations began planning the event with a letter that was sent to their members announcing the open burning of Jewish and “decadent” literature, encouraging them to show their support by first cleansing their own private libraries, then their friends and acquaintances to do the same, and lastly to act against public libraries (Fishburn 32).

The students also presented a “Twelve Theses” at the events (Ritchie), which acted as a kind of manifesto for a return to a pure German culture. The students described the “action” as a response to a worldwide Jewish “smear campaign” against Germany and an affirmation of traditional German values (Fishburn 32). These burnings consisted of more than simply setting fire to a pile of books, but rather students would vocally denounce books by specific authors as they threw them into the fires.

Paul Joseph Goebbels spoke before the cheering crowd of more than one hundred thousand people in Berlin, as upwards of 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books were burned (Manguel 284), signaling (with flames and smoke) an era of state censorship and control of culture. Among the authors whose books student leaders burned include, Bertolt Brecht and August Bebel, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, American authors Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and Helen Keller (Sova 142 & 262). Also among the works burned were the writings of the nineteenth-century poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote in his play “Almansor” the famous quote, “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people” (Holocaust Encyclopedia).

Work Cited

“Book Burning.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2011. Friday. 9 March. 2012.

“Book Burning in Nazi Germany.” Censorship in the Humanities. Censorshipissues, 2010. Friday. 9 March. 2012.

Fishburn, Matthew. Burning Books. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Print.

“Guarding Public Morality.” A Global History of Censorship. Random History and Word Origins for the Curious Mind, 2010. Friday. 9 March. 2012.

Knuth, Rebecca. Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2006. Print.

Laqeur, Walter. Fascism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print

Levy, Richard S. Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. Santa Barbara, 2005. ABC-CLIO eBook Collection. Web. 9 Mar 2012.

Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1996. Print.

Ritchie, J. M. The Nazi Book-Burning. Modern Humanities Research Association, 1988. Print.

Sova, Dona B. Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006. Print.