Why Did Nazis Burn Thousands Of Books?
In the middle of a Berlin square, lies a small glass memorial, but it isn't to commemorate lost souls.
Whether it's media blackouts, censorship, or burning down libraries, people's attempts to control knowledge and culture are often severe and shocking. There are many different reasons for these practices. Sometimes powerful people or those attempting to gain power, are trying to limit the information and ideas available about themselves or the people who oppose them. In other situations, censorship is an attempt to guard cultures, groups, or societies from exposures to material that is considered dangerous or lewd. Still other acts of censorship are symbolic.
One of most famous instances of book burning occurred on May 10, 1933. On this day, university students in Germany burned over 25,000 "un-German" books as a show of support for the Nazi movement. It was considered a cultural cleansing through fire. Works that were burned included those of socialist Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, Ernest Hemingway, and Helen Keller. These burnings proved an ominous sign of atrocities to come.
Although book burnings conducted by the Nazis are perhaps the most well-known, this practice is likely as old as books themselves. According to Time, in 213 B.C., Emperor Shih Huang Ti of China believed that burning all the documents in his kingdom (and killing scholars who taught about them) would make history begin with him. Caliph Omar allegedly ordered his army to burn over 200,000 books from the Library of Alexandria because they would either contradict the Koran or be unnecessary. In more recent times, post-Dust Bowl farmers symobolically burned John Steinback's The Grapes of Wrath in protest of its harsh depictions of agricultural life. In Kern County, California, the book was later banned from county libraries and schools by the board of supervisors.
Book burning has a long and dark history of 2,200 years. It started from ancient china to a bonfire in Germany by nazis but the list of burning books goes on till the 21st century.
To burn books is simply a fundamental suppression of ideas. It shows a factor of censorship from a religious, cultural, or political opposition or group.
In history, the most infamous book burnings were staged under the nazi regime by Adolf Hitler in May 1933.
The German poet Herman Heine well said,
‘‘Where books are burned in the end people will be burned’’
— Herman Heine
Book burning in 1933
In 1933, the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi) came to power in Germany and imposed a dictatorship under the leadership of Adolf Hilter.
Nazis intended to re-establish and organize the german state on the ideology that the german race is the supreme of all races in Europe.
The ministry of propaganda set up various groups to control the specific german art, literature, music, and other types of entertainment and news.
In April 1933, the German students decided to arrange a nationwide book-burning program (Action against the Un-German Spirit) to destroy the international influence, to praise the traditional values, and purify the German race.
Professor, students, and nazi officials gathered, formed specific committees, and decided what kind of books or literature in universities libraries could be anti-national or ‘un german’ so they can burn them.
On May 10, 1933, In each German university city - 34 of them across Germany, students burned over 25000 books.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/e7232b14c3b1
