books burned by Hitler Everything had to be done quickly, with the wind speed. The peremptory order to burn the writings of Jewish authors "at the shameful smear campaign against Germany's Jewish world," not from Goebbels or Hitler, but the new press and propaganda office of the student in less than German a month, from April 12 to May 10, 1933, energetically and systematically organized the burning of banned books not only in Berlin but in every university town in Germany. Students first had to "cleanse" their shelves, those of relatives and then those of all the possible libraries, public squares on the stake was to be advertised and promoted properly, possibly texts with propaganda "against the destructive Jewish spirit" written by writers compliant. There is even a sort of manifesto with 12 student theses aberrant including one that read: "The jew who wrote in German, mind."
And finally here are the high flames 10, 12 yards on the night of Wednesday, May 10 lit up the Opernplatz in Berlin, crammed with crowds that attended the show. And no one complained. There was Goebbels surrounded by SA in a long overcoat clearly contemplated the fire, and then announced "the end of the period of excessive intellectualism jew." Erich Kaestner saw his books thrown on fire while someone was screaming his name and "against the decline and the moral degradation, "and that since then, from darling of the public became" persona non grata. " Kaestner was one of the few writers who was blacklisted in his homeland as 'reporter', perhaps because he lacked the courage to emigrate. Others took their own lives or were killed in a concentration camp, or went abroad, most often without means and without the possibility to publish their works. And when after the war returned home, they found the first of Germany, no longer feel "at home": the public had them hopelessly forgotten.
Yet the Weimar Republic had all enjoyed a great reputation. Ernst Glaeser, for example, Class 1902, a portrait of his generation still more than enjoyable, had aroused the enthusiasm of Hemingway; Edlef Koeppen had become well known for her novel in '28 Bulletin of war, some had even followed the rebels as anarchists who wrote thousands of Rudolf Geist pages, and eventually went door to door to sell postcards with the poems, there were the Communists 'heart', without the party card, but always with the weak and oppressed as Oskar Maria Graf or Egon Erwin Kisch , an extraordinary reporter and war correspondent who went into exile in Mexico and died in '48, had the high-profile chroniclers of Jewish culture in Germany as Georg Hermann, killed in Auschwitz in '43 and biographers of talent such as Franz Blei, king of the Viennese cafes, author of that Bestiarum Literaricum defined by Kafka, "the world's literature in his underwear."
Their story and that of all 94 German writers whose books were burned 75 years ago, along with those of 37 authors, are recounted in a book valuable, in many ways astonishing: The book of books burnt (Volker Weidermann: Das Buch der verbrannten Buecher, ed. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, pp. 255) Amazing for the passionate and exciting research done by the author of the book on the internet and in libraries led to the discovery of antique works of considerable value since forgotten because of the burning of books. Valuable because it contains the unpublished stories, often tragic and disturbing of all intellectuals persecuted by the Nazis and why does justice to the forgotten or neglected writers who are given much more space than those known. Without this book the aim of the Nazis to erase forever from memory the names of many Jewish authors would have been almost reached, the author of the book rightly points out in his introduction.
"Do not be illusions. Hell is the government, "wrote Joseph Roth back in February '33 that his friend Stefan Zweig could hardly believe that he had become one of the most hated writers in Germany. His books were burned together those of Werfel, of Schnitzel, a Wassermann, Klaus Mann, but he, the writer most widely read German-speaking world, was convinced that he was traded to Arnold Zweig, a communist activist hated by the regime. He tried to compromise, I hope the collective insanity would end quickly. Roth on the contrary he understood immediately that their professional life and the material was destroyed. Eventually both went into exile, and both lost their lives: Roth died in a hospital in Paris in '39, three years after Zweig committed suicide in Brazil.
engaging and extremely interesting are the stories of all writers hitherto forgotten because of the fire: disconcerting to Armin T. Wegner and after the war had been given up for dead and instead lived until 1978 in Positano, where he moved in '36. Author of an adventurous and fascinating travel book, At the crossroads of the worlds in 1930, and moralistic foe of the war, in April '33 wrote an open letter to Hitler in which he explained to the Führer with incredible naivete, as Germany was in need of the Jews and because the Jews loved Germany so much. In reality he had no desire to leave his homeland: "Away with you is like dying," he repeated. But the Gestapo put him in prison, tortured him, sent him in the Oranienburg concentration camp from where he escaped. Positano was every day at the desk in front of a stack of blank paper. He never more to write a line. With the great satirical novel
Solneman the invisible, 1914, cherished by Thomas Mann, the writer Alexander Moritz Frey received his first big success was to his misfortune, however, is another admirer, Adolf Hitler, his fellow regiment in the First World War. The future Führer showed much interest in his works and tried in vain to get in touch with him, but Frey carefully avoided him: he was strictly against any racial hatred, against fanaticism, against the military. "I want to, I want to tell the truth, I mean the military and war are the most ridiculous, outrageous, stupid, evil in the world," says at the end of the story of his war experiences, which came out in '29 and judged by the critics even more than the west famous Remarque's nothing new. In '33 the SA Frey's destroyed house and left Germany without money, without the possibility of publishing his work, without citizenship in Switzerland found the support and the help of Thomas Mann. He died in Basel in 1957, poor and forgotten.
certainly the most fortunate of all was Erich Maria Remarque. The night of the fire him, that he was safe in Ticino, heard on radio, with the writer Emil Ludwig, the crackle of flames and exalted speeches of Nazi leaders. He was one of the first to emigrate: January 29, the eve of the takeover of Hitler, had been running non-stop, on board his Lancia, from Berlin in Porto Ronco. He knew well that the number one enemy of the Nazis because of his famous novel, which promised "the truth about the war." To the west is nothing new - the most successful German book of the twentieth century, 20 million copies sold, which drew the film - after having given rise to a series of heated debate, was boycotted by the Nazis in every way : he spoke of endless misery, boredom, lack of sense of the First World War, very little of the heroic death of soldiers. A book rather than a threat to the followers of Hitler which failed to prevent the runaway success.
Remarque chose silence, declared foreign policy, but he continued to write on the fate of the emigrants and concentration camps during his legendary stay in the United States where he became one of the most beloved writers and writers from the Americans. Despite this, those who read his diaries reveals a man hopelessly depressed and fearful. Fear of the desk, work, loneliness.
NOVARA, 27 LUG 2009 - 80 years old, the book series that has put his own name to an entire literary genre. Yes, because if in Italy - and only in Italy - referring to a detective story is known as "yellow", you must own this successful series of books by its cover color yellow, which was inaugurated in 1929 by the publisher Mondadori. 
