Historical Understanding of the celebration of the book burnings throughout Nazi Germany.
Posted on March 27, 2020 | By kdaniel24 | 1 response
In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the main character, Liesel has a passion for reading books. Because she comes from a poor and oppressed family, she has never learned how to read, but her foster father, who treats her with love and respect, is teaching her how to read. However, her foster family is relatively poor too, and they cannot afford too many books. So, she must steal them. Liesel and her foster family have been living in the small town of Molching. On April 20, the small town organizes a large parade for their Führer’s birthday. They organize a book burning in which books, posters, and propaganda of enemies are burned in. The reason this happens for the plot is so Liesel is able to salvage a book that was somehow not burned called The Shoulder Shrug.
However, the fact that a massive book burning could be held in such a small town caught my attention. How widespread were these evil and bigoted book burnings and how large were they. If they happened in a small town like Molching the extent must have been massive. So I researched and this is the information that I have collected: Book burnings were very widespread through Germany with many atrocities such as these being committed throughout the country. These book burnings terrorized speech privileges and certain anti-war figures in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, such as Eric Maria Remarque whose book All Quiet On the Western Front displayed the horrors of war, and so was burned in book burnings. The most famous and largest book burning was in Berlin on May 10 of 1933 in which 25,000 books were burned. They destroyed anything that they thought was un-German. Germany has a long history with book burnings, one of which took place in 1817 when students burned anti-national text in order to call for a unified Germany. Germany at the time was under the German confederation which was made up of Prussia, Austria, and many states. The Confederation was loosely held together, and the students wanted a strong national government. The book burnings in Nazi Germany, however, were even more prominent than in the German Confederation, with major book burnings happening in almost all of the major cities. So book burnings were very real and as large as they are portrayed in the book. But what about the book burning in Molching? As for it happening there, I could not find anything outside of the book.
However, I do not doubt that it did happen. These book burnings were wide spread, and they definitely happened in Munich which Molching is a suburb of. I don’t know if the writer of the book has been to Molching and is basing it off of real events, but the records of a book burning are not online. Molching is today called Olching, and it is still very small.
These book burnings were very evil-spirited in the end. So much knowledge was lost in these burnings. People must learn to tolerate knowledge rather than destroy it. That is the cause of the demise of many an empire. Bigotry. Intolerance of knowledge that contradicts ones thoughts and supports other cultures. People must learn that diversity is not a flaw, but a key.
Source(s): “Book Burning.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning. Accessed 27 Mar. 2020.
This idea of keeping knowledge away from dictator-led groups is present in Red Scarf Girl, as well. In Red Scarf Girl, there is a scene where an official rips up a book because it is ‘revisionist‘. He feels the need to destroy it, because he doesn’t agree with the ideas. This is very similar to book burnings, when books are burned because they don’t contain the ideas that Hitler planted into the Germans’ brains. The neighborhood governing group also makes it a point to force the people in the town to hate people with other ideas. This is very obvious in the propaganda, as Ji – Li explains it the ‘ugly, red faced’ Americans cower in fear from Chairman Mao in the large propaganda poster she looks at in the start of the book. When the German towns burned other countries’ propaganda, they were forming more and more hate. Many of the oppressive groups that have led countries use the same methods to strengthen nationalism, and people didn’t learn from past mistakes. -Emily A