With this book, Volker Weidermann turns his attention to the day books were burned in Germany. His mission: to rescue these books and their authors from oblivion.
Declared an »action against the un-German spirit«, the meticulously planned nationwide campaign culminated on 10th May 1933, when pyres were set up in cities all over Germany. In an eerie ceremony, students, librarians, professors and members of the SA threw onto the fires books they considered incompatible with their ideology. It is impossible to forget the recordings of Joseph Goebbels on the square next to the Berlin State Opera declaring: »And we surrender to the flames the works of ….« followed by the names of individual authors – some of whom were present.
Volker Weidermann describes the course of events on the day when it continued to rain defiantly. He writes about the librarian Herrmann who drew up the original list of authors, about the books and their authors, and about the submissive booksellers and librarians who removed the books from their shelves with such thoroughness that many books and their authors never came to light again. Weidermann’s book describes the life and works of over 100 writers, including such classics as Kästner, Tucholsky, Zweig, Brecht and Remarque, as well as some completely forgotten names such as Rudolf Braune, foreign writers like Ernest Hemingway, and many, like Hermann Essig, whose books simply have to be read again. A book about books, destinies and a country that burned first books, then people.
