Book Burning: The Banning Of Books In Germany

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"Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too" (The History Place). This quote, shared by Heinrich Heine, encapsulates the feeling by many who were upset about the book burnings of 1933, in Germany.The Nazi book burnings on May 10, 1933, was anevent organized by students of universities who burned 25,000 books to censor them. Censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts (Google Definitions). Books, movies, songs, videos, and many more have been censored for many reasons. There are many books in different states that have been banned because of their content, but no group of people has been so set on censoring books that they would burn approximately 25,000…show more content…
After the burnings, more than 100,000 people in New York, which is thousands of miles away marched to protest against them. “The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller” ("Book Burnings in Germany, 1933." PBS. PBS, 25 Apr. 2006. Web. 17 Oct. 2015). Helen Keller wrote a caustic message to German students: "History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.” ("Book Burnings in Germany, 1933." PBS. PBS, 25 Apr. 2006. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.). This letter is a representation of how the authors of the books that were burned felt about this event. The burning of the 25,000 books on May 10, 1933, was the most major event from the entire book…show more content…
Hitler believed the “reawakening of the Germanic Spirit” ("The History Place - Triumph of Hitler: Burning of Books." The History Place - Triumph of Hitler: Burning of Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2015.) was more important than an education. The burnings of the books show us this because Hitler believed so strongly in this, the students that burned the books were following him and wanted to get rid of anything that was “un-German”. “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...” (The HIstory Place) This quote shows us how the Germans started to view literature after Hitler began to rule. This is important to the topic of the Nazi Book Burning because it shows what people started to think about Germany as a country under the rule of Hitler. The book burning caused a change of people’s views of Germany, mostly in a negative
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