Heinrich Heine’s sinister line, “those who burn books will ultimately burn people,” is one of the most quoted phrases in modern history. In his March 11 lecture, CEU’s Recurring Visiting Professor Sholomo Avineri helped put the sentence in context as he outlined the history of German Jewry in the 19th century.
As shocking as the Nazi book burning in Berlin in 1933 was, it was not the first time that German students and academics had initiated such acts. Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels urged students and academics to burn books by authors considered enemies of the German spirit, warned Avineri.
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in the late 18th century, heine’s birthplace, düsseldorf in particular and the rhineland in general, was occupied by france. Rhineland Jews were emancipated, with Karl Marx’s father and Heine among them, and were free to attend university and even practice law or medicine. When the area was annexed to Prussia in 1815, the hitherto emancipated Jews were given the choice of converting to Christianity and keeping their profession, or keeping their faith and losing their position. The backlash of this “choice” was that it radicalized intellectuals, sowing the seeds of future revolutionaries and communists.
With German nationalism, anti-Semitism grew in the early 19th century. Mostly forgotten Kantian philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fries even called for legislation against Jews. He said their influence on Germany was overwhelming, and he even suggested that “they should wear a sign in public places.” However, “Jews were so marginalized at the time, they were basically invisible,” Avineri pointed out. The sentiment of physical exclusion of Jews had been present before the German unification of 1870, although it was the most “Jewish-friendly” country for a short while.
In 1817, two years after the German nationalists’ victory over Napoleonic France and on the 300th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses, student fraternities (burschenschaften) organized a pilgrimage to the wartburg, a center of German nationalism where Luther found refuge after his excommunication. at the wartburg festival, students declared that their universities would not accept any foreign students – foreign means french or jewish. The one exception was the University of Heidelberg, whose fraternity was called the “Juden” fraternity thereafter. students and academics made nationalist speeches in favor of unity, and books whose authors opposed German unification were burned. the first book that was thrown into the fire was written by a Frenchman and bore the title “civil”.
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was this case of book burning what triggered heinrich heine’s prophecy “those who burn books will ultimately burn people?” heine’s first play “almansor” is a tragic love story between an arab man and doña clara, a moroccan woman who is forced to convert from islam to christianity. Taking place in Granada in 1492, the tragedy depicts the burning of the Qua’ran, the act that gives rise to the prayer now etched into the floor of Berlin’s Opernplatz commemorating the horrific book burning of 1933. Why Heine described Muslims as victims of book burning and not Jews remains an open question. Heine’s lyric poetry was much loved in Germany, his most famous poem “Lorelei” even appeared in a collection of German folk songs, although the poet’s name was given as anonymous in his books, along with the works of Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway , Erich Kastner, Karl Marx, Heinrich Mann and many other “non-German” authors were also burned on May 10, 1933.
avineri is a professor of political science at the hebrew university of jerusalem and a member of the israel academy of sciences and humanities. He served as Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He received the Israel Award, the country’s highest civilian award in 1996.
the conference was sponsored by the ceu’s nationalist studies program and the jewish studies program.
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