burning books--9/15/26
Today's selection -- from Churchill's Citadel by Katherine Carter. Book burning by German university students in the 1930s:
“This mood among the youth of Britain was in stark contrast with young people in Germany, 3 million of whom joined Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis’ paramilitary wing, by the end of 1933. Festering resentment towards established political leaders and financial hardship drove the young people of Germany to radical alternatives. Hitler promised them strong leadership and a national rebirth, which were particularly appealing to that disaffected generation, and many undertook direct action as a result.
“On 10 May 1933, university students in 34 towns across Germany began burning books deemed 'undesirable' to the new governing regime with such fervour that over 25,000 were incinerated in one night. In Berlin alone, over 5,000 students bearing the swastika created an inferno of destruction outside the opera house, consisting of 2,000 books deemed to be 'un-German'. They burned books by Jewish, left-wing and liberal authors and those by critics of Nazism. Those thrown into the fires included works by Karl Marx, Helen Keller, H. G. Wells, Ernest Hemingway and Albert Einstein. These almost ritualistic spectacles were accompanied by the chanting of oaths and the wielding of flaming torches. Einstein heard of this devastating cultural destruction while staying in Belgium. He then wrote of it in a letter to his and Churchill's mutual friend, Professor Lindemann, with whom Churchill had travelled to Munich the previous year. ‘I am sitting here in my very pleasant exile’, Einstein wrote, with a palpable sense of relief at being far from such scenes. His choice of wording was perhaps surprising given the £1,000 reward advertised by a German newspaper for anyone who could successfully take his life. Lindemann replied, ‘It seems that the Nazis have got their hands on the machine and they will probably be there for a long time.’
“Albert Einstein was among those who had initially underestimated the Nazis. In an interview for the New York Times in December 1930, he said that Hitler was 'living on the empty stomach of Germany' and 'As soon as economic conditions improve, he will no longer be important.' Two years later, Einstein was once again in America, this time in California, when Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. Within weeks of the Nazis' seizure of power, his property and possessions were confiscated. ‘I dare not enter Germany because of Hitler’, he wrote to his close friend and rumoured lover, Margarete Lenbach, on 27 February 1933. On his return to Europe, he visited the German Embassy in Brussels to surrender his German citizenship. He told a journalist before his departure from the United States that 'Humanity is more important than national citizenship.’ Einstein had to decide his next move quickly. It was then that he received an invitation from Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, a maverick Member of Parliament with an adventurous spirit, who was also a long-time friend of Churchill's. While offering sympathy for Einstein's plight, he said 'That even Einstein should be without a home has moved me deeply' and offered Einstein and his wife the use of his London home for a year. This was a surprisingly generous offer given that the pair had only met once and even then only in passing. Einstein politely declined, choosing to remain in Belgium and stay instead in Le Coq-sur-Mer, a small resort near Ostend. However, a seed had been planted, and it was not the last time that the great physicist would hear from the MP for Birmingham Handsworth.
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| Nazi youth brigades burning "un-German" works by Jewish and left-wing authors at the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, 1933 |
“Writing at the end of May 1933 to fellow physicist Max Born, who had also recently escaped from Germany, Einstein said of his reputation there, ‘I've been promoted to an ‘evil monster’.’ He added, 'all my money has been taken away from me. But I console myself with the thought that the latter would soon be gone anyway.’ By that time, Nazi policies had forced the abrupt retirement or removal from office of all Jewish state employees, including those working in Germany's universities. When it was pointed out to Hitler that this could have catastrophic consequences on the development of scientific understanding and application in his country, he replied, ‘Then we shall do without physics and chemistry for 100 years.’ Sensing the inevitable, Einstein wrote to Lindemann, saying, 'I shall never see the land of my birth again.'
“Churchill had known Professor Lindemann since the latter months of the First World War, when he ‘distinguished himself by conducting, in the air, a number of experiments, hitherto reserved for daring pilots, to overcome the almost mortal dangers of ‘spin’. The pair became much closer from 1932 onwards, and Lindemann frequently travelled from Oxford to visit the Churchills at Chartwell. He went on to become the most frequent signatory in the house's visitors' book, and by the summer of 1933, with the Churchills having lived in the house for nine years, he had signed it 40 times. He became Churchill's chief advisor on scientific aspects of modern warfare, especially air defense, and the pair often talked on the subject until the early hours of the morning. His insights were more than compensation for any difficulties his hosts faced in accommodating his strict vegetarian diet. Churchill’s literary assistant, Maurice Ashley, later recalled his dietary requirements as consisting of just ‘whites of egg and stewed apple’, both of which fortunately could be found in plentiful supply in Chartwell's kitchen garden. Lindemann was also teetotal, and so couldn't partake in the ever-present champagne at Chartwell, which was almost always Pol Roger and was in plentiful supply in the early months of 1933 as the family had much to celebrate.”
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