Burned Places

Last week Red Baron became aware of a traveling exhibition at the Square of the Old Synagogue on the burning of "un-German" books by the Nazis. I took some photos. The morning sunlight painted eerie patterns on the hung posters.

Places of book burnings.

In 1933, these book burnings took place throughout the Reich and were organized mainly in university towns by the National Socialist German Student League. I already reported on the commemorative event in Freiburg.

May 10 in Berlin, in the presence of the Reichsminister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, represented only the climax of the Nazi book burnings.

Already on March 9, the SA stormed the People's Library in Pirna, Saxony, and burned the "objectionable" books.

The supporting metal grid gives the impression of prison bars

On April 10, 1933, the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Literature Chamber) issued a decree against distributing books and writings that endanger the "National Socialist cultural will."

Here are old and new photos of burned places. I added some studentische Feuersprüche (student fire calls):

1st Caller: Against class struggle and materialism, for national community and idealistic attitude to life!
I hand over to the flame the writings of Marx and Kautsky.

Hamburg, Kaiser-Friedrich Ufer, May 15.
Notice the students in the background in vollem Wichs (in full polish).

2nd Caller: Against decadence and moral decay! For discipline and morality in family and state!
I give to the flame the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, and Erich Kästner.

Heidelberg, Universitätsplatz, May 17 and July 16

4th Caller: Against soul-grinding overestimation of sex life, for the nobility of the human soul!
I give to the flame the writings of Sigmund Freud.

         

Helgoland, Schulplatz, May 18

7th Caller: Against literary betrayal of the soldier of the world war, for the education of the people in the spirit of militancy!
I hand over to the flame the writings of Erich Maria Remarque.

        

Hamburg, Boberger Dünen, May 24

Outside Germany, the book burnings were caricatured.

Through Light to Night.
So Dr. Goebbels said: "Let us start new fires
so that the blinded do not wake up.

Lagniappe:

This poster experienced vandalism.

Here is a pamphlet, "Nazi German in 22 Lessons," that British Royal Air Force planes dropped over German-occupied territories in early 1942. It was intended to offer a different reading of Nazi terms to everyone who lived in a press world of the same kind.

The author is Walter Trier, known for his illustrations of Erich Kästner's children's books. As a Jew, he lost his job in Nazi Germany, which he left in 1936 for London. 

Emil and the Detectives, with the book cover by Walter Trier,
was Kästner's first major success and is his best-known work.

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