Bebelplatz

On May 10, 1933, on initiative of Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, the Nazis organized a book burning around Germany. In Berlin, the book burning was organized at the Opernplatz (now Bebelplatz) next to the Humboldt University. At Opernplatz, about 20,000 books were burned by writers who were considered by the Nazis to be of a degenerative nature and thus harmful to the Germans. Already in the first half of the nineteenth century, the German writer Heinrich Heine had said ”that where one burns books one also soon burns people (Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man bucher verbrennt, dort wo man bucher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen)”. Heine’s books were some of those that were burned. In connection with the book burning at Opernplatz, Goebbels gave a speech in which he talked about the importance of how important it was to destroy these books. As propaganda minister, Goebbels had his own ministry called the Chamber of Culture. This Chamber oversaw everything in cultural life, film, music, press, art, theatre and literature. If a person wanted to be active in these areas, he had to be a member of the Reich chamber. Only the internationally recognised Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper was given some degree of freedom.