Overview

Book burning at German universities

May 10, 1933 Germany

On 10 May 1933, National Socialist students organised book burnings at universities all over Germany. These actions were symbolic, directed against everything that the Nazis felt did not belong in Germany. Books by Jewish, left-wing, or pacifist writers such as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Erich Maria Remarque went up in flames.

Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels was one of the many people present at Opernplatz in Berlin. He watched approvingly as a student leader roared: ‘I consign everything un-German to the flames!’ According to the Nazis, everything that didn’t correspond to their ideology was un-German.

Left-wing writer Oskar Maria Graf, who had fled Germany, wrote a flaming protest from abroad. He demanded that his books be burned as well, so that they wouldn’t end up ‘in the bloody hands and depraved brains of the brown murderous gang.’