What books were burned in the squares by the Nazis, and How the fates of their authors developed

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In March 1933, German Nazis began burning books by 313 authors. It was an official state event. Understandably, American or Soviet writers - or those who have long been deceased - felt neither warm nor cold from him. But what about the fate of the authors in the countries where the Nazis or their allies took power? Well, the correct answer is: very different and sometimes unpredictable.

Received the Nobel Prize

After the Nazis came to power, it was not so easy to saturate the German book market with high-quality, interesting literature. First, a huge number of authors or their individual (and popular) creations were banned. Secondly, when publishing any living author, it was required to obtain his confirmation that he is an "Aryan", that is, belongs to the representatives of a certain circle of European peoples. The publishers sat down for letters.

One of the letters with a request to confirm her Aryan identity was received by the Swedish writer Lagerlöf. In general, Germany pinned great hopes on Scandinavian writers, as both high-quality authors and clear representatives of the Nordic Aryan culture. Lagerlöf seemed to be an expression of the Nordic spirit (and, in fact, was a living embodiment of it). She had many magical stories that children and adults loved, and she was also a Nobel laureate. All in all, it would prove to be a wonderful replacement for many popular, but henceforth unprintable, authors in Germany.

Lagerlöf responded by more than simply banning her books from being published in Germany. She came out with a number of revelations of the anti-human policies of the Third Reich and spent her savings and efforts to take out of Germany at least one talented person - the poet and writer Nellie Sachs, an ethnic Jewess, author of magical stories, like Lagerlöf herself.

Lagerlöf died in 1940. In 1966, Sachs received the Nobel Prize for Literature - as once her savior. By that time, she had moved away from magical stories to comprehending the theme of flight, pursuit, the relationship between a hunter and a prey. The reasons for changing the topic are more than obvious. By the way, along with the books of the future Nobel laureate Sachs, the books of the late German Nobel laureate Bertha von Suttner were also burned.

Became the Righteous of the World

Before Hitler came to power, the German Armin Wegner was known in the world as one of the main witnesses of the Armenian genocide. He took hundreds of pictures of what was happening, being a soldier of the German army during the First World War, and after the war he turned to the heads of government with demands to help the Armenians and published the book "Howl from Ararat".

In 1933, Wegner wrote an appeal to Hitler demanding not to dishonor Germany and oppress Jews. After that, he was arrested by the Gestapo. After being tortured, he was taken to a concentration camp. He changed several concentration camps, but in the end he was released, deciding that he was already broken. In 1938, Wegner fled to Italy, where he lived under an assumed name. He was really broken, and this was noticeable even many years after the war. He never wanted to return to Germany.

Although Wegner did not save a single person, with his staunch and open resistance to genocide, he earned such fame that he was declared the Righteous One of the world. On his grave is inscribed in Latin the saying of one of the medieval popes of Rome: "I loved justice, hated lawlessness - and therefore I am dying in exile."

Made a career in Hollywood

Gina Kaus (at birth - Regina Wiener) was born in Vienna. She changed several husbands and lovers before becoming a famous writer in Austria and Germany: this was discussed as often as her books, praising love with Austrian zest for life. In the Third Reich, a woman could only love her homeland, and the books, according to the Nazis, confusing girls were ceremoniously burned. Kaus stopped coming to writing parties in Berlin. At home, she continued to write books, plays and screenplays.

In 1938, after the Anschluss of Austria, Kaus fled to Paris. There, in a short time, according to her new texts, two films were shot, which gained popularity - but soon the Second World War began. Overcome with misgivings about the fate of France, Cowes left her too, now settling in the United States. There she settled in Hollywood and made an excellent career as a screenwriter. Films based on her texts were still a success, only now - with an American audience.

There, in the USA, she lived the rest of her life, occasionally visiting Europe. As a screenwriter, she had a chance to collaborate with Merlin Monroe, Alfred Hitchcock, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Angela Lansberry, Janet Lee, Elizabeth Taylor and other stars of her time. She died in old age in Los Angeles. Her grandson Mickey Cowes also became a writer.

Cooperated with the Nazis

The Austrian Czech Karl Renner, a well-known social democrat, five years after the Nazis burned his books, as if nothing had happened, called on the Austrians to vote in a referendum FOR the Anschluss with Germany. After this Anschluss, a quarter of all Austrian Jews died in concentration camps. Although the Jewish purges began literally immediately, Renner was not embarrassed - he even offered his services to the Nazi authorities, although, of course, not in the executions. A few years later, he also offered his services to the representatives of the Soviet Union who liberated Austria - and, with Stalin's approval, organized a provisional government.

Max Bartel at the very beginning of the twentieth century was known as a leftist working poet. The son of a bricklayer, who himself went through several working professions, he was burning with internationalism, revolution and labor - like many Germans at that time, because the movement of communists and socialists originated in Germany. He married the communist Louise Kezler. Subsequently, their son Thomas Barthel became a famous scientist who made the first advances in deciphering the traditional writing of Easter Island. But long before that, Max and Louise broke up.

After the Nazis burned Bartel's book "Dead Man's Mill", Max immediately understood where the wind was blowing, and with terrible speed he "reforged" - he joined the NSDAP, published a novel about a communist worker who realized that being a communist is bad, but a National Socialist is good … He worked in a propaganda publication, was a member of the circle of pro-Nazi-minded poets, during the war he was called up and served for the benefit of the Third Reich.

When Soviet troops occupied East Germany, Barthel had to hide as one of the active Nazi propagandists, and then flee to France. After that, he never again touched on political topics in his work, preferring to write children's songs and rhymes.

He became famous as a children's writer and another Nazi accomplice - Waldemar Bonzels. The modern reader remembers him as the author of the adventures of Maya the bee. After the Nazis began to burn his books, his article was published very soon, in which Bonzels hailed the cleansing of German culture of Jewish influence. He edited a military propaganda newspaper, wrote anti-Semitic books, and generally collaborated with the new ideology more than actively. After the war, he published one of his anti-Semitic books again, simply having edited it ideologically. And soon after that he died of Hodgkin's disease. For a very long time, his work was ignored both in the GDR and in the FRG.

Have been arrested or executed

The Jewish writer Georg Borchardt immediately moved with his family to Holland after Hitler came to power. There he continued to publish. After the occupation of Holland, he was captured and sent together with his family to a concentration camp. There he was killed.

Died in a concentration camp Bruno Altman, a famous social democratic publicist. From the Third Reich, he went to France. During the German occupation, the Vichy people caught him and handed him over to the Nazis. He ended his days in Majdanek. In Auschwitz, another "burned" author was killed, Robert Danneberg, an Austrian Jew, one of the authors of the current democratic charter of Vienna. Back in 1934, he was among those who proposed uniting the efforts of political parties to confront the threat of Nazism. After the Anschluss, he delayed the flight from his native country until it was too late - the borders were closed and he was arrested by the Gestapo.

A few more writers from those whose books were burning in the squares ended up in prisons or concentration camps. The Jewess Adrienne Thomas, who fled to France, was captured there - she was miraculously scraped out from the Gurs camp, after which she was able to cross to the United States. But Rudolf Hilferding, the former Austrian Minister of Finance, who was captured at about the same time and there, could not be saved. He died in the dungeons of the Gestapo.

Participated in conspiracies against Hitler

At the time of his coming to power, Paul Hahn was a furniture designer - he was developing concepts for one factory. He had only one book, with memories of the revolution in Württemberg. He suppressed this revolution. And he was also a hero of the First World War - he fought as a dragoon, was forced to leave the front line due to injury. An ethnic German, a former police chief, he did not seem to have to accept the Nazis and Hitler with hostility.

However, he was involved in Operation Valkyrie, a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. The assassination attempt failed, and in 1944 Khan was arrested. As a result of the investigation, he was given three years in prison: they took into account both his origin and service for the good of his homeland during the previous war.

Another "burned-out author" was involved in the same conspiracy - Gustav Noske, a social democrat and former defense minister. Once, like Khan, he suppressed an attempt at revolution in Germany. Despite the official social democratic position, all his career he entered into an alliance with the "right", so it seemed that Hitler should also suit him. Although he was fired from the post of Hanoverian chief president after the Nazis came to power, he was paid a government pension and was not repressed. Nevertheless, observing the reality around him, he very soon began to look for connections with the underground - and found it.

When the conspiracy was uncovered, Noske was sent to a concentration camp. He spent less than a year there - he was transferred to an ordinary prison. After the war, both he and Khan continued to lead a very ordinary life. Khan did not get into politics, and Noske was not averse to returning, but he was given to understand that this was undesirable, so he focused on writing anti-Semitic books in which he viewed communism as a product of Jewish mysticism.

Almost created the European Union

Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi was the child of an inter-ethnic marriage. His father was an Austrian count, his mother was the daughter of a Japanese merchant. Richard himself grew up as a convinced pan-European - a supporter of the unification of Europe. He also became a Freemason, confident that membership in the lodge would help him to influence the politics of Europe and bring closer the moment of its unification, and wrote several books on pan-Europeanism. It was them that the Nazis burned.

After the Anschluss, von Kudechove-Kalergi urgently left Austria. After wandering around pre-war Europe, he moved to the United States, where, like many emigrants, he lectured - in general, the immigration of scientists and professors who fled from the Third Reich seriously pushed American higher education and science forward. While Germany was getting rid of scientists on the basis of either Jewishness or ideology, they were collected in the United States.

After the war, Richard returned to Europe. It was he who was among those who prepared Churchill's famous speech, and it was he who inserted there a statement about the need for the unification of Europe. The subsequent years of his life von Kudehove-Kalergi consistently worked to bring the union of Europe closer as a reality. Although he did not live to see the EU, nowadays he is considered one of the “grandfathers” of the union, and a commemorative medal has been established in his honor in the EU - it is awarded for strengthening the unity of Europe.

Ruined Belgium

Hendrik de Man was born in Belgium but taught in Germany when the Nazis came to power. He was a socialist and proposed a planned economy as a remedy for unemployment and, as de Man believed, Nazism that grew out of it. Naturally, the Nazis burned his books about this. De Man himself was fired from the institute, and he returned to his homeland.

There he made a rapid political career. He was in turn put on the posts of Minister of Labor, Minister of Finance and, finally, minister without portfolio - personal adviser to King Leopold. King de Man recommended not to get involved in a war with Germany, and as a result, Belgium was not ready for real armed resistance. It was quickly occupied.

The Belgian government quickly moved to London, but the king did not follow his ministers - he was dissuaded by de Man. Ultimately, this led to the abdication of Leopold, that is, obeying de Man's advice, Leopold first lost the country, and then the crown. De Man, however, announced that everything that was happening was for good, since it was destroying the rule of the capitalists, and tried to use the Nazi regime to strengthen the workers' trade unions in Belgium. As a result, the Nazis banned him from all political activities, and de Man himself received asylum in Switzerland.

After the war, a Belgian military tribunal found de Man guilty of high treason and sentenced him to twenty years in prison and compensation for damage to the country in the amount of ten million francs. There was little left to do - to return de Man to Belgium in order to imprison him and make him pay. De Man, however, was not going to return anywhere. But then he did not live long - in the fifties, when crossing the railroad, his car's engine stalled. A train collided with the car, and de Man died with his wife.

After the Third Reich, Europeans took a fresh look at many of their idols: 4 Nobel laureates and other Aryans who firmly refused to cooperate with the Nazis.