An innovative approach to historical remembrance is the keynote of the commemoration in Berlin on 10 May 2008 for the 75th anniversary of the book burnings by Nazi students in 1933. Bebelplatz, the memorial square in the centre of the city, will be transformed by an open-air celebration of survival and renewal. The message is tolerance, pluralism, cultural diversity, freedom from censorship, and resistance against right-wing extremism. MUT correspondent Karen Margolis talked to the organisers.


"We're trying to bring history into the present", says Gonzalez del Puerto from the Instituto Cervantes, Spain's official organisation for Spanish-speaking culture and the main initiator of the 10 May event. "Commemoration doesn't only have to be a sad reflection on the past — it can also be a celebration of life today. By reaching out to people of all ages and nationalities in Berlin, we want to make a plea for tolerance and show that the city is open to everyone."

The scene of the commemoration is Bebelplatz, where the book burnings took place on 10 May 1933. Students from Friedrich-Wilhelm University on Unter den Linden (today's Humboldt University) staged a ritual burning of around 25,000 books on the square (then called Opernplatz). It was part of a carefully orchestrated nationwide campaign. Goebbels' ministry of propaganda had already paved the way for these spectacular demonstrations by issuing a list of works by over 500 authors considered harmful and undesirable.

On 8 April 1933, the students association drew up twelve "theses" on culture with deliberate reference to Martin Luther. The theses attacked "Jewish intellectualism", called for German language and literature to be purified, and demanded that universities become centres of German nationalism. The students justified their actions as a response to a worldwide Jewish "smear campaign" against Germany, and the need to affirm traditional German values.

On the night of 10 May 1933, right-wing students in 22 university towns across Germany marched in torchlight parades as part of the "action against the un-German spirit". This was anything but spontaneous: the pre-arranged programmes included speeches by leading Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders. Students ceremoniously threw books pillaged from libraries into the bonfires, accompanied by singing, bands playing, and ritual incantations. And in some places, including Berlin, radio broadcasts brought the events live to countless listeners throughout the country.

The flames devoured books mainly by Marxist, pacifist and Jewish writers, many of them great figures of German literature and science like Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Heinrich and Klaus Mann, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Erich Kästner and Anna Seghers — as well as those of American authors Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller. The book burnings became a symbol of the Nazi destruction of culture and intellectual life whose effects are still felt in Germany today. It was an unmistakable warning for hundreds of writers, scientists and academics who fled the country soon afterwards. Most of them never returned from exile.

As a permanent reminder, since 1995 Bebelplatz has housed one of Berlin's most poignant monuments, the Memorial of the Book Burning, designed by Micha Ullmann. Looking down through a translucent panel set into the ground, all you can see are empty bookshelves in an eerie whiteness. Engraved in the paving nearby is a famous line from Heinrich Heine's 1821 play, 'Almansor': "Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned". Heine was actually referring to the burning of the Qu'ran by Catholics during the Spanish Inquisition.

"The Nazis organised book burnings to demonstrate how they dealt with people and ideas that didn't fit their world view", says Gonzalez Del Puerto. He points out that this kind of cultural and intellectual destruction is part of Spain's history, too, and not only during the Inquisition. Book burning became a weapon in the 1930s Civil War, when opposing factions in the conflict burned left-wing, anarchist or religious literature, while censorship and persecution of dissident writers subsequently became a hallmark of Franco's fascist regime until the 1970s. "And we shouldn't forget," Del Puerto adds, "that Spanish colonialists from the 15th century on burned the books of indigenous peoples during their conquest of America."

With this in mind, to broaden the scope of the 10 May commemoration Instituto Cervantes has teamed up with co-organiser Tres Culturas (which represents Mediterranean and North African culture), and invited participants such as Sami Nair, a French-Algerian political scientist who specialises in dialogue between the Western and Oriental world. The Spanish minister of culture, Cesar Antonio Molina and the president of Andalusia, Manuel Chaves, are among the prominent speakers, along with Prof. Christoph Markschies, director of the Humboldt University, and Prof. Wolfgang Benz from Berlin Technical University's anti-Semitism research centre. The head of Berlin's Jewish community, Lala Süsskind, and civil rights expert Joachim Gauck, will debate social responsibility in relation to the 1933 events in Germany. The musical programme includes singing by Avitall Gerstetter, cantor from the Berlin Jewish Community; a New York saxophone quartet; a composition by Miguel Alvarez Fernandez, music professor at Berlin's Technical University; and free jazz by music students. To emphasise their aim of reaching out to young people at schools and colleges, instead of the usual big names the organisers have invited two students from the Humboldt University to act as moderators for the event.

Jens Hahn from the Mitte district branch of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), another of the co-organisers, explains why his party offered its cooperation for the 10 May commemoration. "During the Nazi era, not only Opernplatz and the university, but many other centres for Nazi government, propaganda and terror were located in Mitte. This makes it all the more important for us as a local party to highlight freedom of speech and opinion in the district today, and to welcome people from all over the world here."

Gonzalez Del Puerto says that the 10 May event on Bebelplatz is embedded in a bigger project focusing on libraries as part of the European Year of Cultural Dialogue. "We're bringing together experts from all kinds of different library institutions and looking at books as tools for developing social cohesion and cultural understanding", he explains.

The fourth member of the organisational quartet for the 10 May commemoration, the Humboldt University, is already experienced in this field: aware of its historical responsibility, it has investigated and analysed the events of 1933 and already organised several exhibitions on the topic. Bernd Schilfert, a Humboldt economic history graduate, has worked for eight years on the 'Lesezeichen' project related to the book burning. Parallel to the day of events on Bebelplatz, over the weekend of 9/11 May there will be an exhibition in the University, and public readings, lectures and discussions with academics and students.

Schilfert points out that the dramatic image of the book pyres on public squares and the shocking catalogue of famous literary works that went up in flames tend to obscure the wider picture. The book burnings were part of the consistent Nazi campaign to discredit and ultimately wipe out not just literature and its creators, but also the scientific and technical achievements of Germany's scholars and inventors who opposed the Nazis, or whose work contradicted fascist ideology. By the end of May 1933, the Nazi authorities had seized and destroyed around half a million kilograms of books from public libraries in Berlin. "This wasn't ignorant destruction", Schilfert says. "It was an intentional, cold-blooded policy to isolate particular scientists and intellectuals, label them as dangerous and make them and their work into targets of hate." To emphasise this aspect of the book burnings, from 8 May 2008 an exhibition "Lesezeichen ('Bookmarks') 10 Mai 2008" in the foyer of the Humboldt University will focus on the work of some scientists and academics who were victimised by the Nazis. This will be accompanied by a special literary and musical evening on Friday, 9 May at 6.30 p.m., with bands and other acts, and readings by young contemporary authors from the 'Berliner Lesebühnen', moderated by Bernd Schilfert and Ivo Lotion.

Many of the students involved in the book burnings went on to enjoy good careers under the Nazi regime, Schilfert says. "The spectacle on Opernplatz and in other cities in Germany was the beginning of an educational policy designed to encourage self-censorship, a calculating attitude and a sense of superiority among students." Visitors to Bebelplatz on 10 May will find a very different picture. The commemoration organisers have given a special role to today's Humboldt students. Some will be reading selected passages from books that were burned in 1933, while others will be acting as hosts. One of the most charming touches of the whole event is the service for visitors who don't speak German. A team of students in T-shirts marked with different languages will be available to translate at the visitors' post on the square. These instant interpreters, young people studying in Berlin today, are a living sign of internationalism and the triumph of the word over book burning and persecution.

© Karen Margolis for MUT
28 April 2008

75th anniversary of the book burning — commemoration on Bebelplatz, Berlin-Mitte, 10 May 2008, 11 a.m.—5 p.m.

75. Jahrestag der Bücherverbrennung – Gedenk- und Kulturveranstaltung mit VertreterInnen aus Wissenschaft, Politik, Kultur und Gesellschaft auf dem Berliner Bebelplatz am 10. Mai 2008 von 11:00 bis 17:00 Uhr

Exhibition: "Lesezeichen 10 Mai", Foyer of Humboldt University, Unter Den Linden, Berlin-Mitte, opens 8 May 2008. Info: Tel. Dagmar Oehler 2093-2944

Further information/Weitere Infos: Projektgruppe Gedenkveranstaltung Bücherverbrennung Bebelplatz 10. Mai • Instituto Cervantes, G. Cano Peral,
Tel: 030/25761818 – gaspar.cano@cervantes.de

SPD Berlin-Mitte, Jens Hahn, Tel: 030/28091857 – info@jens-hahn.eu

Humboldt University Press Office: Tel. 030-20932946

More information in german language: www.buecherverbrennung.de

Foto: http://www.ub.uni-duisburg-essen.de/biblio/ausstell/licht/imageASM.JPG

www.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de
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