Title: The Bonfires of Berlin: Historical and Contemporary Reflections on the Nazi Book Burnings
Abstract: The Berlin book burnings took place at the symbolic site of what had always been regarded as Germany's humanist, cultured, and cosmopolitan heart—in the large quadrangle of the famed Humboldt University on Unter den Linden, directly opposite the National Library and the Grand Opera House. On that night, over 20,000 books containing purportedly "un-German" works by Marxist, Jewish, and avant-garde authors were consumed in the flames.2 The list of the proscribed authors reads like a Who's Who of the German progressive intelligentsia, and included non-Jews as well as Jews: a very cursory listing would have to include Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Mann, Arnold and Stefan Zweig, Erich Maria Remarque, Karl Kautsky, Robert Musil, Karl Marx, Lion Feuchtwanger, Kurt Tucholsky, Erich Kästner, Carl von Ossietzky, Thomas Mann, and, of course, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. While this was the central event, it is important to note that on the same night, May 10, 1933, book burnings took place at 30 universities throughout Nazi Germany: on the Römerberg in Frankfurt; the Schlossplatz in Breslau; the Königsplatz in Munich; and in Bonn, Dresden, Göttingen, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Nuremberg, and Würzburg.3 KeywordsPolitical TheatreGrand OpusFrench Civil CodeDemic OrganizationMortal EnemyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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