Elk Eber, Book Burning in Berlin, 1933

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‘Bücherverbrennung’ (‘Book Burning’)
Biography: Elk Eber

Depicted is the public book burning at the Opernplatz in Berlin on 10 May 1933.
This drawing by Elk Eber was published on a full page in the ‘Illustrierter Beobachter’ on 27 May 1933 (Folge 21, page 563).

‘Bücherverbrennung’ by Elk Eber, depicted on a full page of the ‘Illustrierter Beobachter’, 27 May 1933, Folge 21, page 563.
The text below the picture reads: ‘Die Scheiterhaufen für Hetz- und Schundliteratur, -wurden von den deutschen Studenten am 10. Mai errichtet und verbrennt’. Zeichnung Elk Eber (‘Pyre meant for provocative and junk books, -created and burned by German students on 10 May. Drawing by Elk Eber’).
The swords held in the air by the students is a symbolic scene which goes back to the Wartburg Book Burning of 1817.

Left: ‘Bücherverbrennung’ by Elk Eber, depicted in ‘Wider den undeutschen Geist, -Bücherverbrennung 1933‘, Werner Tress, 2003.
Right: ‘Bücherverbrennung’ by Elk Eber, depicted in ‘Nazi Book Burning and the American Response’, by Guy Stern (article in the book ‘Zenzur und Kultur’, by John A. McCarthy and Werner von der Ohe, 1995.
  

Book Burning
Beginning on May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups carried out public burnings of books they claimed were ‘un-German’. The book burnings took place in 34 university towns and cities. Works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers ended up in the bonfires. The book burnings stood as a powerful symbol of Nazi intolerance and censorship. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged and ‘unwanted’ books onto bonfires with great ceremony, band-playing, and so-called fire oaths. In Berlin, some 40,000 persons gathered in the Opernplatz to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: ‘No to decadence and moral corruption! Goebbels enjoined the crowd. ‘Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Gläser, Erich Kästner.’
The burning of books under the Nazi regime on May 10, 1933, is perhaps the most famous book burning in history. Book burning has a long and dark history. The May 1933 book burning in Nazi Germany had a precedent in nineteenth century Germany. In 1817, German student associations (Burschenschaften) chose the 300th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses to hold a festival at the Wartburg, a castle in Thuringia where Luther had sought sanctuary after his excommunication. The students, demonstrating for a unified country -Germany was then a patchwork of states- burned anti-national and reactionary texts and literature which the students viewed as ‘Un-German.’

The Wartburg Festival of 1817
‘On 18 October 1817 a group of German university students with liberal and national tendencies, many of whom were veterans of the Wars of Liberation, assembled at the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach. United under the mantra of ‘Honor, Freedom, Fatherland’, the students agitated for a reform of German colleges, demanded a liberal constitution for Prussia, and envisaged a unification of the German states. The occasion for the Wartburg Festival itself was heavy with national sentiments. The date 18 October was in fact the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig, a decisive Prussian victory over Napoleon. The year 1817 was also the tercentennial of the Protestant Reformation, and the student’s political demands and the Castle itself were steeped in memories of Martin Luther and the Reformation.  The celebrants of the festival sang the Lutheran hymn ‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God’ along with other patriotic songs, and in a ritual that recalled Luther’s burning of the papal bull that excommunicated him, they burned books written by conservative and antidemocratic authors’ ( Archaeologies of Confession: Writing the German Reformation, 1517-2017’, 2017).

The Wartburg Book Burning in 1817, depicted in ‘Wider den undeutschen Geist, -Bücherverbrennung 1933‘, Werner Tress, 2003.

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