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appalachiablue

(43,089 posts)
Sat Aug 20, 2022, 08:51 PM Aug 2022

"Where They Burn Books"...Heinrich Heine

- 1933 NAZI BOOK BURNINGS, US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

On May 10, 1933 student groups at universities across Germany carried out a series of book burnings of works that the students and leading Nazi party members associated with an “un-German spirit.” Enthusiastic crowds witnessed the burning of books by Brecht, Einstein, Freud, Mann & Remarque, among many other well-known intellectuals, scientists & cultural figures, many of whom were Jewish.
The largest book bonfire occurred in Berlin, where an estimated 40,000 people gathered to hear a speech by the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, in which he pronounced that “Jewish intellectualism is dead” and endorsed the students’ “right to clean up the debris of the past.”

The response to the book burnings was immediate and widespread. Counter demonstrations took place in New York and other American cities, including Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago. Journalists in the American and world press expressed shock and dismay at these attacks on German intellectual freedom, and various authors wrote in support of their assaulted German brethren.

Artists, writers, doctors, and other intellectuals fled Germany, prompted by the barbarity of the book burnings and by continuing acts of Nazi persecution. Such barbarity was just the beginning, however. One can see in retrospect how the book burnings and other steps to remove “Jewish influence” from German institutions foreshadowed much more catastrophic Nazi plans for the Jews of Europe.

-- Eerily, among the books consigned to the flames in 1933 were the works of the nineteenth century Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who in 1822 penned the prophetic words, “Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”...

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/1933-book-burnings#:~:text=Eerily%2C%20among%20the%20books%20consigned,%2C%20burn%20human%20beings%20too.%E2%80%9D
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- Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (born Harry Heine; 13 Dec. 1797 – 17 Feb. 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities—which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Heine

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- List of authors banned in Nazi Germany
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_banned_in_Nazi_Germany
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- BOOK BURNING, US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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... Read More, 'A 19th c. Precedent'...
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning

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"Where They Burn Books"...Heinrich Heine (Original Post) appalachiablue Aug 2022 OP
K n R ! Thanks for posting! JoeOtterbein Aug 2022 #1
YW, and the horrible truth it is :( appalachiablue Aug 2022 #4
There is a nice essay on Heine in the July 22, 2021 New York Review of Books 4dog Aug 2022 #2
TY for the article, and excellent poet choice. I'd like to have met Heine, definitely appalachiablue Aug 2022 #3

4dog

(523 posts)
2. There is a nice essay on Heine in the July 22, 2021 New York Review of Books
Sat Aug 20, 2022, 09:04 PM
Aug 2022

but it is behind a paywall that I can not circumvent. Perhaps your library can. Also several earlier essays on him there. From the first paragraph:

If I had to nominate an ideal poet, a Platonic poet, a conservator and repository of poet DNA, a poet to take after and on and from, a forsake-all-others-save-only-X poet, it wouldn’t be Byron, though it would be close. It wouldn’t be MacNeice, though ditto. It wouldn’t be Mandelstam or Akhmatova or Cavafy or Apollinaire or Ovid or Brecht or Li Bai or Bishop or Baudelaire or Les Murray or T.E. Hulme. It would be Heine.

No, I don't know many of the poets. But you get the idea.

appalachiablue

(43,089 posts)
3. TY for the article, and excellent poet choice. I'd like to have met Heine, definitely
Sat Aug 20, 2022, 09:28 PM
Aug 2022

a brilliant thinker and writer of the times.

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