JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The infamous book burnings as we knew them started in their earnest wickedness on German university grounds and city squares on May 10, 1933. The attempt in destroying intellectualism, history, science, philosophy, beauty, and many other aspects of culture was to protect Germany from past and present destroyers of Teutonic legacy and anything that threatened Hitler's brand-new German reich. So to that end the Nazis in control thought the best way to approach works like these was to burn it all.
In this editorial cartoon drawn by Georges Schreiber the Nazis are portrayed in a bestial, devilish, and accurate light. The image appeared in The Nation (volume 136 no. 3541) on May 17, 1933, and as we can see a zombie-ish Hitler is seen in the upper left, with an aged Paul von Hindenburg to his right. The flames are built on a pile of some of the damned books, featuring Einstein front and center (as the representative of the "degenerate Jewish science"), surrounded by works id Remarque, Ludwig, Heine x2, Mendelssohn, Spinoza, London, and others:
For an example of the targeted books have a look at the following list (from Wolfgang Herman's "Prinzipelles zur Säuberung der öffentlichen Bücherein," Börsenblatt für den deutschen Büchhandel 100 (5/16/1933):, 356-358 [Principles for the Cleansing of Public Libraries] was for the use of librarians in keeping their collections free from various types of art/science/tech/literature/art/music, and needless to say anything that was written by a Jewish author):
"1. The works of traitors, emigrants and authors from foreign countries who believe they can attack and denigrate the new German (H.G. Wells, Rolland) ; 2. The literature of Marxism, Communism and Bolshevism. 3. Pacifist literature. 4. Literature with liberal, democratic tendencies and attitudes, and writing supporting the Weimar Republic (Rathenau, Heinrich Mann); 5. All historical writings whose purpose is to denigrate the origin, the spirit and the culture of the German Volk, or to dissolve the racial and structural order of the Volk, or that denies the force and importance of leading historical figures in favor of egalitarianism and the masses, and which seeks to drag them through the mud (Emil Ludwig); 6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Haeckel); 7. Books that advocate "art" which is decadent, bloodless, or purely constructivist (Grosz, Dix, Bauhaus, Mendelsohn); 8. Writings on sexuality and sexual education which serve the egocentric pleasure of the individual and thus, completely destroy the principles of race and Volk (Hirschfeld); 9. The decadent, destructive and Volk-damaging writings of "Asphalt and Civilization" literati! (Graf, H. Mann, Stefan Zweig, Wassermann, Franz Blei). [transl. note: a derogatory term for writers dealing with upper middle class urban society]; 10. Literature by Jewish authors, regardless of the field; 11. Popular entertainment literature that depicts life and life's goals in a superficial, unrealistic and sickly sweet manner, based on a bourgeois or upper class view of life."
- [Source: When Books Were Burned, University of Arizona Library, for the source and for the translation: http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/burnedbooks/documents.htm#guidelines ]
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