- Headline
-
Books Will Burn---But Thoughts Endure
- Publication Date
- Tuesday, May 16, 1933
- Historical Event
-
German Students, Nazis Stage Nationwide Book Burnings
This database includes 930 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Page Section and Number
- 4
- Author/Byline
- --
- Article Text
- It is almost like going- back into the middle ages to read of Germany's attempts to put the torch to all books which do not conform to the notions of Adolf Hitler.
Those bonfires dotting public squares, from one end of Germany to the other, may have seemed to the Nazis like the beacon fires of a new day, a day in which everything "non-German" is to be destroyed. In reality they marked the camps of an army engaged in the most hopeless of all lost causes—the attempt to make force triumph the ideas of men.
It has been tried before, over and over again. Roman emperors and Spanish inquisitors have tried it, Russian czars and French kings, courts civil and religious—and it was never worked.
***
Books have been burned and their authors, have been burned, all of the resources of great kingdoms have enlisted to stamp out ideas that rulers did not like; and nothing of permanence has ever been accomplished. The fight against a book, against an idea, against a song, is one fight in which ultimate defeat is written in the stars
When a man gi es a book to the world—provided that his book has real meat in it and not just a tale told to amuse idle minds—he contributes something which his fellows will use as long as it contains anything of value for them. A book is the embodiment of a dream, the clothing in words of vision, the incarnation of an idea; and it is one of the ironies of existence that such things, utterly lacking in material substance, are among the world's imperishables.
***
To be sure, you can take the book and burn it. You can take the author and burn him too, if you like; you can send soldiers into homes and dispossess any people you find reading the book or talking about it. But you accomplish nothing, aside from adding momentarily to the world's stock of pain and its list of heroes. History will remember you only because you tried the Impossible.
And the thing you fought against will go on working, as long as there is any work for it to do. Your bonfires, will die down and their a ashes will grow cold; but the flames that was the book itself will keep on burning as long as men anywhere need its light. - History Unfolded Contributor
- Jessica L.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: German Students, Nazis Stage Nationwide Book Burnings
- Book Burning (Encyclopedia Article)
- Immediate American Responses to Nazi Book Burnings (Encyclopedia Article)
- Culture in the Third Reich: Overview (Encyclopedia Article)
- Book Burning (Timeline)
Bibliography
Birchall, Frederick T. “Burning of the Books, May 10, 1933.” In National Socialist Germany: Twelve Years that Shook the World, edited by Louis L. Snyder, 101–104. Malabor, FL: Krieger, 1984.
Stern, Guy. “The Burning of the Books in Nazi Germany, 1933: The American Response.” (external link) Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 2, (1985): 95–114.
Stern, Guy. Nazi Book Burning and the American Response: Distinguished Lecture. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1991.
United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Nazi Book Burnings and the American Response. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 1988.
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