Book burning

[ZeitGeist]

Hi,

The book from Sebotendorf "Before Hitler came"
was forbidden, and i think it was burnt also.

Note that this book was edited in French in 2001

[Dan]

Exceptions may Be permitted where such music is intended for a strictly scientific or strictly educational purpose and where such music is interpreted by persons having two or more Negroid or Negritic grandparents.

The first clause seems very Germanic. Hans Moderator tells us he is allowed to study revisionist materials under a similar modern law. The second is ambiguous. Does this mean that people living in Germany but who are from a Black household or culture are exempted from playing jazz on account of it's their legitimate right, as members of this culture?

[Max]

Lists of [and guidelines for] Banned Books, 1932-1939

http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/images ... uments.htm

they burned h g wells!!!!!! why would they do that i mean i dont realy see how his books could offend them!!! or am i missing something???

Guidelines from Die Bücherei 2:6 (1935), p. 279
1. Die Werke von Landesverrätern, Emigranten und von Autoren fremder Völker, die glauben, das neue Deutschland bekämpfen bekämpfen und herabsetzen zu können. (H.G. Wells, Rolland).
1. The works of traitors, emigrants and authors from foreign countries who believe they can attack and denigrate the new German (H.G. Wells, Rolland).

[valadezaj]

I have read HG Wells book The Shape of Things to Come. In one of the chapters Wells heavily criticises Hitler. He says Hitler is a rather small person who would never amount to much. Hitler is also compared to Mussolini and Wells says Hitler and his ideology is only a crude copy of him. (That was written in 1933 just after Hitler came to power.)

[Karl]

Scott!?!

You know, I have always held your intellect, and especially your talent for creativity coupled with this intellect in very hard regard, you are gravely in danger of degrading yourself to the lowest possible ebb; a very obvious Nazi apologist.

[David C. Clarke]

Great Post Witness! I had never read that regulation about music, even though it is often alluded to. Thanks much.
Best Regards, David

(P.S. to Scott, I meant to say in a thread on the Lounge that
people always say they don't listen to rap--until they hear
Eminem's "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up?" )

[Bjørn from Norway]

Hello!
I have always meant, that the burning of books, or even banning them, is the evidence of a uncivilized society.

Are the participants of this Forum aware that, at least in Norway, books were destroyed after the war? In August 1945, all libraries got a letter in which it said which books they should remove & destroy at once?

There were also books 1946-50 that were banned, and the authors were put to court.

Sad, really.

B

[tonyh]

Why are some people coming down on Scott?

I think he is making a valid comparison between the nazi book burning and other countries book banning and or burning.

Its very easy for us to sit back and piously wag our finger at the third reich burning books, but will the same people look at their own country in the same way?

My own country, Ireland, had many books banned and frowned upon in years past. Thats as bad as Gobells organising a book burning propaganda stunt.

Tony

[David C. Clarke]

I think that Scott is absolutely right, in so much as now, instead of governments banning books, the private book-selling industry, with its hosts of editors and a death-grip on book distribution networks is doing the censorship itself.
Best Regards, David

[White Leopard]

The regulation of books, music and painting in Nazi Germany closely resemble the codes that ruled over the arts in Soviet Russia. It is a charachteristic of totalitarian regimes that they will closely parallel each other even if they are on opposite ends on the political spectrum.

The banning of Upton Sinclair had nothing to do with his best-known book, "The Jungle", or Hitler's vegetarianism. Sinclair, like Dos Passos, was a socialist writer; one of the group of socially critical American journalist/novelists who appeared around the turn of the Century who were labelled as "Muckrakers". Most of their works were either exposures of corporate and industrial corruption like the "The Jungle", or socialistic social satire of the kind produced by Dos Passos. Sinclair wrote both types.

Sinclair's obvious socialism wasn't the only reason for the bann. He took square aim at Hitler and the Nazis in a series of novels begun in the late 1930's that exposed their repressive practices, internal corruption, and persecutions. The hero of this series was named Lanny Budd and appears to be loosely based on "Putzi" Hansfstengel. It continued throughout the war years and ended with the Allied triumph.

Calls for the banning of books aren't limited to totalitarian regimes either. One has only to see the agitation the United States to take certain books out of school and public libraries because some group has found something to be offensive. "Huckleberry Finn" and "Catcher in the Rye" are frequent targets. Many sex education books face the same opposition. Religious groups have tried to bann the Harry Potter series because they see them as promoting both Satanism and the practice of witchcraft. It is only about forty-odd years since it was illegal to bring a copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" or Henry Jame's "Tropic of Cancer" into the country. These prohibitions are not as obvious or spectacular as Goebbel's bonfire, but the intent is the same.

[walterkaschner]

White Leopard wrote

It is only about forty-odd years since it was illegal to bring a copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" or Henry Jame's "Tropic of Cancer" into the country. These prohibitions are not as obvious or spectacular as Goebbel's bonfire, but the intent is the same.

A US Federal District Court struck down the US Customs ban on Joyce's "Ulysses" in 1933, almost 70 years ago. I don't know when "Tropic of Cancer" became available, but I had a copy in 1948, and its author is Henry Miller, not Henry James, whom I'm sure is turning over in his grave at the attribution.

Regards, Kaschner

[White Leopard]

Thank you Walter for correcting my sometimes faulty memory. I'm sure that Henry James will thank you also .

I seem to remember that the ban on "Tropic of Cancer" wasn't offically lifted until the late fifties. But, as you have shown, my memory can play me false at times.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

The regulation of books, music and painting in Nazi Germany closely resemble the codes that ruled over the arts in Soviet Russia. It is a charachteristic of totalitarian regimes that they will closely parallel each other even if they are on opposite ends on the political spectrum.

The banning of Upton Sinclair had nothing to do with his best-known book, "The Jungle", or Hitler's vegetarianism. Sinclair, like Dos Passos, was a socialist writer; one of the group of socially critical American journalist/novelists who appeared around the turn of the Century who were labelled as "Muckrakers". Most of their works were either exposures of corporate and industrial corruption like the "The Jungle", or socialistic social satire of the kind produced by Dos Passos. Sinclair wrote both types.

Sinclair's obvious socialism wasn't the only reason for the bann. He took square aim at Hitler and the Nazis in a series of novels begun in the late 1930's that exposed their repressive practices, internal corruption, and persecutions. The hero of this series was named Lanny Budd and appears to be loosely based on "Putzi" Hansfstengel. It continued throughout the war years and ended with the Allied triumph.

Calls for the banning of books aren't limited to totalitarian regimes either. One has only to see the agitation the United States to take certain books out of school and public libraries because some group has found something to be offensive. "Huckleberry Finn" and "Catcher in the Rye" are frequent targets. Many sex education books face the same opposition. Religious groups have tried to bann the Harry Potter series because they see them as promoting both Satanism and the practice of witchcraft. It is only about forty-odd years since it was illegal to bring a copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" or Henry Jame's "Tropic of Cancer" into the country. These prohibitions are not as obvious or spectacular as Goebbel's bonfire, but the intent is the same.

actually they were smarter in Soviet Russia - they found more efficient way to kill an interest in the book -namly to include it in official school program:) ( god how much did I hate to read Bulgakov's White Guard because they made me do it - and I love Bulgakov!!! -Mater and Margarita and Dog's Heart are among my favorites!!!)

[Max]

White Leopard wrote

It is a charachteristic of totalitarian regimes that they will closely parallel each other even if they are on opposite ends on the political spectrum.

I prefer the model which has total government at one extreme [eg fascism -communism] and no government [anarchism] at the other.
The liberal democracies being somewhere between.

[Karl]

Why are some people coming down on Scott?

I think he is making a valid comparison between the nazi book burning and other countries book banning and or burning.

Its very easy for us to sit back and piously wag our finger at the third reich burning books, but will the same people look at their own country in the same way?

My own country, Ireland, had many books banned and frowned upon in years past. Thats as bad as Gobells organising a book burning propaganda stunt.

Tony

I think that Scott is absolutely right, in so much as now, instead of governments banning books, the private book-selling industry, with its hosts of editors and a death-grip on book distribution networks is doing the censorship itself.
Best Regards, David

Okay, it was late and it wasn't one of my better days. Let's look again:

Goebbels burning books was a propaganda stunt. For something to actually be banned we need evidence of the books on police or customs lists or that the books are absolutely unavailable in libraries or for sale during those times. I'm not really seeing that evidence with this "list." Of course Nazi Germany didn't publish books by Jews during this period, but the Bundestablishment doesn't allow "Nazi" books to be published now either, a rather selective morality if you ask me

Well yes, dramatic gestures like book burning (! ) is propaganda and on principle I agree that the banning of anything is wrong and shows (IMHO) a fundamental weakness in a government...there is also the question of control: how far do we allow a government to interfere with our lives? However, I don't see the censorship in present day Germany as 'selective morality' because I can appreciate (though I may not agree) their wariness of anything to do with the NSDAP...look where such ideology got them, and then there is of course politics and the EU.

I suppose I saw your response Scott, as a 'coming to the rescue' (even with book burning!!!) rather then an objective observation (which maybe it is, maybe it is not) and reacted. To call you a Nazi apologist on this was maybe too strong.

Karl