Harmful and undesirable : book censorship in Nazi Germany

281 Pages·2016·16.62 MB·English

by  Lewy

Harmful and Undesirable

Harmful and Undesirable
Book Censorship in Nazi Germany
GUENTER LEWY
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lewy, Guenter, 1923- author.
Title: Harmful and undesirable : book censorship in Nazi Germany / Guenter Lewy.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015044227 | ISBN 9780190275280 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Censorship—Germany—History—20th century. | Germany—Politics and
government—1933–1945. | Germany—Intellectual life—20th century. | BISAC: HISTORY /
Europe / Germany.
Classification: LCC Z658.G3 L49 2016 | DDC 363.310943/0904—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044227
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force
can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from
the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny.
—President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
World War II poster, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1942

CONTENTS
Preface ix
PART 1 THE EMERGENCE OF CENSORSHIP
1. Book Control in the Weimar Republic
3
2. The Book Burning of 1933
7
PART 2 THE AGENCIES OF CONTROL
3. The Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
19
4. The Reich Chamber of Literature
28
5. The Gestapo and SD
49
6. The Party Commission for the Protection of National Socialist
Literature
62
7. Alfred Rosenberg: Hitler’s Plenipotentiary for Ideological
Education
74
PART 3 THE PRACTICE OF CENSORSHIP
8. The Reasons for Banning Books
85
9. Jewish Books
101
10. The Purge of Libraries
112
vii
viii Contents
11. Wartime Censorship
129
12. The Battle for Turf
145
PART 4 THE IMPACT OF CENSORSHIP
13. The Inner Emigration
165
14. Conclusion
193
Abbreviations and Glossary 199
Notes 203
Bibliography 233
Index 253
PREFACE
The history of the Third Reich has been studied extensively. Yet, surprisingly,
book censorship, an important tool in the Nazi apparatus of dictatorial rule,
has received little attention by scholars. In 1960 Dietrich Strothmann brought
out the first book- length treatment of National Socialist literary policy, but
the work, originally a dissertation, was marred by a failure to consult archival
sources. Between 1995 and 2010 the German historian and librarian Jan- Pieter
Barbian published three valuable books dealing with the politics of literature in
Nazi Germany, which for the first time drew on relevant archival materials to
describe the practice of book censorship. An English translation of one of these,
Literaturpolitik im NS- Staat, appeared in 2013. Barbian’s works, however, are
more in the nature of reference books to be consulted for specific information
than of books to be read. Crammed with detail (one of them is 916 pages long),
they fail to provide a sense of narrative or a clear picture of the events involved.
The present study aims to fill this gap. It is designed to provide an account of
book censorship in the Third Reich within the context of Nazi cultural policy.
At the same time, the work also throws an interesting new light on intellectual
life during the Nazi era and on some of the major figures of the Nazi regime,
such as Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels, and Alfred Rosenberg.
In the eyes of the Nazis, German culture had to be purged of its liberal and
Marxist elements, with a special target the alleged domination of German
culture by Jews. Hitler repeatedly stressed that in this world, human culture
and civilization are inseparably bound up with the existence of the Aryan.
Recognizing the importance of the printed word, the regime early on sought
full control of both the publication and the readership of books. On March 13,
1933, the Nazi stalwart Goebbels was appointed head of the new propaganda
ministry, created to achieve the forcible coordination (Gleichschaltung) of all
those engaged in creative activity. Insofar as it concerned books, the ministry’s
remit included authors, publishers, bookstores, and libraries. The aim was to get
rid of all ideological rivals and achieve the preeminence of National Socialist
ix