A History Lesson

A taste of the research I plan on doing for LIS 7990 (Independent Study)...

Seventy-eight years ago, to the day, students affiliated with the Deutsche Studentenschaft burned books deemed inappropriate throughout Nazi Germany. Here is a link to: The 12 Theses Against the Un-German Spirit: A Propaganda Campaign of the Deutsche Studentenschaft (Twelve Book-burning Slogans).
Goebbels said at a rally, "Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Gläser, Erich Kästner."

Common inquiry: what books and/or authors were commonly burned and destroyed?
The University of Arizona Library has a fabulous special collection exhibit: When Books Burn. Wolfgang Hermann published a piece, Prinzipelles zur Säuberung der öffentlichen Bücherein = Principles for the Cleansing of Public Libraries, in a professional library journal titled Börsenblatt für den deutschen Büchhandel which has a compilation of works deemed degenerate by the regime. The United States Holocaust Museum has a detailed and interactive (narrated) list of 58 authors with photos and quotes from their work.

May 10, 1933

The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path...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, an 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 Weimar Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage, the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.

--Joseph Goebbels
(Nazi Arschloch = Nazi A-hole)

In 1821, 112 years prior to the Third Reich, German author Heinrich Heine wrote in his piece, Almansor, the following which has been used by historians to describe the regime's atrocities:

Das war Vorspiel nur. Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.

Translation: "That was just foreplay. Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people."