Locking in, Uniforming, Book-burning, Blood-letting

February 8, 2010 5:03 PM

What notable books did the Nazis burn? I have found references to "All Quiet On The Western Front" being targeted for burning, and was wondering what other famous books they were throwing on the bonfire. Was there a list of targeted books, or did they just burn anything that did not look German enough to them?
posted by WhackyparseThis to Society & Culture (10 answers total)

Best answer: "Among the authors whose books student leaders burned that night numbered well-known socialists such as Bertolt Brecht and August Bebel; the founder of the concept of communism, Karl Marx; critical 'bourgeois' writers like the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, and 'corrupting foreign influences,' among them American author Ernest Hemingway. The fires also consumed several writings of the 1929 Nobel Prize-winning German author Thomas Mann, whose support of the Weimar Republic and critique of fascism raised Nazi ire, and the works of international best-selling author Erich Maria Remarque, whose unflinching description of war, All Quiet on the Western Front, Nazi ideologues vilified as "a literary betrayal of the soldiers of the World War." Erich Kästner, Heinrich Mann, and Ernst Gläser, denigrated in Goebbels' blistering rhetoric, represented early German literary critics of the Nazi regime, although Heinrich Mann had gained fame as the author of Professor Unrat, which appeared in German cinemas in 1930 as 'The Blue Angel'; and Kästner was primarily known for his literature for children and young adults. Other writers included on the blacklists were American authors Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and Helen Keller, whose belief in social justice encouraged her to champion the disabled, pacifism, improved conditions for industrial workers, and women's voting rights. "

From the Holocaust encyclopedia
posted by Paragon at 5:08 PM on February 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

I came here to post that exact paragraph, via a quick Google search for [nazi book burning].
posted by Jaltcoh at 5:10 PM on February 8, 2010

Best answer: There is a pretty good wikipedia page about this.

"The official list was published by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. Authors, living and dead, were placed on the list because of Jewish descent, or because of pacifist or communist sympathies or suspicion thereof."
posted by pseudonick at 5:18 PM on February 8, 2010

The majority of the remaining contents of the Załuski Library - Poland's largest/first public library - were destroyed during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

Here's a Google preview of a PDF dealing with Polish libraries, specifically the Jagiellonian Library of Krakow, during the Nazi occupation.

From the text: Of twenty-two million volumes in the prewar collections of all Polish libraries, only seven million escaped harm. School and public libraries were hurt the most, as the total losses of their prewar collections amounted to between 92 and 93 percent. Libraries in Warsaw and Poznan suffered the greatest losses. Many of them, including the National Library, Higher Military Academy, Polytechnic, Medical Society in Warsaw, and the Raczynskich Library in Poznan, lost almost 100 per cent of their collections. In Warsaw almost 90 percent of all library buildings, including public, scientific, special, and academic, were destroyed. During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, Ludwig Fischer, governor of Warsaw, gave personal orders to set the Raczynskich Library on fire. The building as well as 300,000 volumes of precious books were burned to the ground.
posted by mdonley at 5:21 PM on February 8, 2010

It's also worth noting that in their campaign against modern art in general (so-called "degenerate art"), the Nazis confiscated and often destroyed art catalogues, monographs, journals, etc. (not to mention countless works of art themselves) in addition to literature and journalistic works. I know I've read an account of some of the specific art books they destroyed, but I can't find it at the moment -- I'll post again if I track it down.
posted by scody at 5:45 PM on February 8, 2010

Best answer: The Mass Psychology of Fascism. by Wilhelm Reich 1933 was banned by the Nazis.
posted by hortense at 7:32 PM on February 8, 2010

The library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was famously burned in 1933.
posted by gimonca at 8:58 PM on February 8, 2010

Best answer: Sorry, URL fail.
posted by gimonca at 8:59 PM on February 8, 2010

There's a German Bibliothek der verbrannte Bücher-project [library of burned books], with, among other things, an index with titles.
posted by ijsbrand at 12:33 AM on February 9, 2010

Make that: titles that must be reprinted.

In August 2009 the Augsburg University bought the George P. Salzmann collection, consisting of 12,000 titles the Nazi's would have burned.
posted by ijsbrand at 12:37 AM on February 9, 2010