Nazi Germany, Book Burnings and Censorship

As the National Socialists rose to power in 1933, censorship also rose along with their ideals. On May 10th 1933, the first book burnings took place, an event that would spread through the next two months and millions of books were burned and destroyed.

The Nazi party eventually published a list of ‘damaging and undesirable writings’ the Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums packed with authors of Jewish descent, authors with pacifist tendencies, communist sympathies or suspicion there of. Although the original list encompassed only Nazi Germany, as the Nazis occupied other countries, the lists expanded and each country had its own list of literature that must be destroyed.

Some authors on the original list are unheard of outside Germany, others are household names even today. Some of them may surprise you, here is the full list of authors banned in Nazi Germany with some of the better known ones featured along the way.

A

Alfred Adler
Hermann Adler
Max Adler
Raoul Auernheimer

Austrian Physicist Alfred Adler, best known for coining the phrase ‘Inferiority complex’. Books burned as he was of Jewish heritage.

B

Otto Bauer
Vicki Baum
Johannes R. Becher
Richard Beer-Hofmann
Walter Benjamin
Walter A. Berendsohn
Ernst Bloch
Felix Braun
Bertolt Brecht
Willi Bredel
Hermann Broch
Ferdinand Bruckner

Otto Bauer, Austrian Social Democrat considered one of the leading thinkers of the left-socialist Austro-Marxist grouping. Banned for Marxist writings.

D

Ludwig Dexheimer[2]
Alfred Döblin
John Dos Passos

E

Albert Ehrenstein
Albert Einstein
Carl Einstein
Friedrich Engels

Albert Einstein, German theoretical physicist. Books burned due to Einstein being Jewish. Einstein saved as he happened to be visiting the USA when war broke out and he never returned to Germany.

Books US – UK

F

Lion Feuchtwanger
Marieluise Fleißer
Leonhard Frank
Anna Freud
Sigmund Freud
Egon Friedell

G

André Gide
Claire Goll
Oskar Maria Graf
George Grosz

Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Books burned as Freud was of Jewish descent. Fled to Britain during WWII and died in exile in 1939.

Books – US – UK

H

Ernst Haeckel
Jaroslav Hašek
Walter Hasenclever
Raoul Hausmann
Heinrich Heine
Ernest Hemingway
Magnus Hirschfeld
Jakob van Hoddis
Ödön von Horvath
Karl Hubbuch

American author, Ernest Hemingway. Books banned and burned for pacifistic and communist tendencies.

The Private Lives of Authors: Hemingway

I

Vera Inber

J

Hans Henny Jahnn
Georg Jellinek

K

Erich Kästner
Franz Kafka
Georg Kaiser
Mascha Kaleko
Hermann Kantorowicz
Karl Kautsky
Hans Kelsen
Alfred Kerr
Irmgard Keun
Klabund
Annette Kolb
Paul Kornfeld
Siegfried Kracauer
Karl Kraus
Adam Kuckhoff

Franz Kafka, German speaking Bohemian (place) Jewish novelist. Books banned and burned as Kafka was Jewish.

The Private Lives of Authors: Kafka

L

Jack London
Ernst Lothar
Emil Ludwig
Rosa Luxemburg

M

André Malraux
Heinrich Mann
Klaus Mann
Thomas Mann
Hans Marchwitza
Ludwig Marcuse
Karl Marx
Vladimir Mayakovsky
E.C. Albrecht Meyenberg
Walter Mehring
Gustav Meyrink
Ludwig von Mises
Erich Mühsam
Robert Musil

Jack London, American author. Books banned and burned in Nazi Germany due to the authors socialist affiliations.

Jack London Quotes

N

Alfred Neumann
Robert Neumann

O

Carl von Ossietzky (German pacifist, Nobel Prize winner, died at Nordend hospital in Berlin-Pankow from tuberculosis contracted in the concentration camps)