A hundred years before the advent of Hitler, the German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, had declared: "Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too."
May 10, 1933 - Students and storm troopers on the Opera Square in Berlin with books and writings deemed "unGerman."
Below: Some four years later - at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich a lecture is given entitled "The Führer's book Mein Kampf as a mirror of Aryan world-view," by SS-Hauptsturmführer Prof. Dr. Walther Wüst with the SS leadership corps of Munich and SS-NCOs in attendance.
On the night of May 10, 1933, an event unseen in Europe since the Middle Ages occurred as German students from universities once regarded as among the finest in the world, gathered in Berlin to burn books with "unGerman" ideas.
The students, along with brownshirted storm troopers, tossed heaps of books into a bonfire while giving the Hitler arm-salute and singing Nazi anthems.
Among the 20,000 volumes hurled into the flames were the writings of Henri Barbusse, Franz Boas, John Dos Passos, Albert Einstein, Lion Feuchtwanger, Friedrich Förster, Sigmund Freud, John Galsworthy, André Gide, Ernst Glaeser, Maxim Gorki, Werner Hegemann, Ernest Hemingway, Erich Kästner, Helen Keller, Alfred Kerr, Jack London, Emil Ludwig, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Hugo Preuss, Marcel Proust, Erich Maria Remarque, Walther Rathenau, Margaret Sanger, Arthur Schnitzler, Upton Sinclair, Kurt Tucholsky, Jakob Wassermann, H.G. Wells, Theodor Wolff, Emilé Zola, Arnold Zweig, and Stefan Zweig.
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joined the students at the bonfire and declared: "The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end...The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you.
As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death – this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – a deed which should document the following for the world to know – Here the intellectual foundation of the November [Democratic] Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise..."
Germany was now led by a self-educated, high school drop-out named Adolf Hitler, who was by nature strongly anti-intellectual. For Hitler, the reawakening of the long-dormant Germanic spirit, with its racial and militaristic qualities, was far more important than any traditional notions of learning.
Before Hitler, German university towns had been counted among the world's great centers of scientific innovation and literary scholarship. Under Hitler, Germany's intellectual vitality quickly began to diminish.
Truth, rational thinking and objective knowledge, the foundation stones of Western Civilization, were denounced by Nazified students and professors in favor of mysticism, speculation and collective thinking toward a common goal – the pursuit of a glorious future for Germany.
continued
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-bookburn.htm
May 10, 1933 - Students and storm troopers on the Opera Square in Berlin with books and writings deemed "unGerman."
Below: Some four years later - at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich a lecture is given entitled "The Führer's book Mein Kampf as a mirror of Aryan world-view," by SS-Hauptsturmführer Prof. Dr. Walther Wüst with the SS leadership corps of Munich and SS-NCOs in attendance.
On the night of May 10, 1933, an event unseen in Europe since the Middle Ages occurred as German students from universities once regarded as among the finest in the world, gathered in Berlin to burn books with "unGerman" ideas.
The students, along with brownshirted storm troopers, tossed heaps of books into a bonfire while giving the Hitler arm-salute and singing Nazi anthems.
Among the 20,000 volumes hurled into the flames were the writings of Henri Barbusse, Franz Boas, John Dos Passos, Albert Einstein, Lion Feuchtwanger, Friedrich Förster, Sigmund Freud, John Galsworthy, André Gide, Ernst Glaeser, Maxim Gorki, Werner Hegemann, Ernest Hemingway, Erich Kästner, Helen Keller, Alfred Kerr, Jack London, Emil Ludwig, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Hugo Preuss, Marcel Proust, Erich Maria Remarque, Walther Rathenau, Margaret Sanger, Arthur Schnitzler, Upton Sinclair, Kurt Tucholsky, Jakob Wassermann, H.G. Wells, Theodor Wolff, Emilé Zola, Arnold Zweig, and Stefan Zweig.
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joined the students at the bonfire and declared: "The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end...The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you.
As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death – this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – a deed which should document the following for the world to know – Here the intellectual foundation of the November [Democratic] Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise..."
Germany was now led by a self-educated, high school drop-out named Adolf Hitler, who was by nature strongly anti-intellectual. For Hitler, the reawakening of the long-dormant Germanic spirit, with its racial and militaristic qualities, was far more important than any traditional notions of learning.
Before Hitler, German university towns had been counted among the world's great centers of scientific innovation and literary scholarship. Under Hitler, Germany's intellectual vitality quickly began to diminish.
Truth, rational thinking and objective knowledge, the foundation stones of Western Civilization, were denounced by Nazified students and professors in favor of mysticism, speculation and collective thinking toward a common goal – the pursuit of a glorious future for Germany.
continued
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-bookburn.htm
