"Totalitarian leaders have one trick up their sleeve that intellectuals have struggled to understand; that is, they are deadly serious."--Paul Hollander
While we celebrate the fact that we recognize the horror of the Nazi destruction of books, I think it's important to remember that there are still a great many people who are trying to prevent people (especially young people) from having access to important books. The number of book banning incidents in the U.S. today is really frightening. It is something that librarians, and all of us, have to fight against constantly.
The broad strokes of the book selection should have alerted us to the broad categories of the Holocaust, which took about 12 million lives, including 2 million Roma, about 800K-1M homosexuals, about the same number of communists and the list goes on. The Jews deserve a special place in our memories of the horror; they were not alone.
As many times as I have read about this I had never noted that sentimental fiction was included.
And sadly though librarians are at the forefront of defending books today, it was a German Librarian who organized the list. Could not find much about him in English.
Wolfgang Herrmann was the German librarian and member of the Nazi Party, whose blacklist provided the template for the Nazi book burnings in May 1933.
The Nazi machine was just as likely to MAKE someone into something as they were to find a ready-made candidate. "Oh, you agree with us? You'd make a great librarian."
I couldn't find out much about him. He had a librarian job from which he was dismissed, then joined the party, then assumed this role. I have German citations but hard to run down.
In librarian history there were librarians who enforced segregation in the U.S. South--Brown v. Louisiana--
The Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131 (1966) that a silent sit-in demonstration protesting segregation in a public library was protected symbolic speech under the First and 14th Amendments.
So, while today librarians are ardently for free speech and access to all-- there were those in the past who did not. As with any field with people on the wrong side of history, they are not highlighted.
This is true. I was recently doing research on librarians who cooperated with the Blacklist during the McCarthy Era. Only the resisters and heroes get the mention.
I wrote a textbook on public libraries in 2000 and included some of this but there wasn't much. I am making a draft to follow up. There have been recent books but only recent. I am as guilty as anyone in any field in wanting to focus on those who did the right thing, but as you point out we need to know the whole story.
Do you have a link to your work on McCarthy period? You can write me direct at klmccook@gmail.com
Here's a bit of a philosophical question off the top of my head: does "movement involvement" like Wolfgang's say more in favor of resistance/"counter-movement" involvement or more in favor of deeper commitment to neutral institutional values? Would it have been better if Wolfgang had said: "The hell with y'all fascists. I resist!", opening a quick and easy door to his being removed as an obstacle or "I don't care about y'all's ideology. You can't have the books, and I'm going to resist the Communists, too. You can all go play somewhere else." Would "Sippenhaftung" have applied in such a case? Was simple non-compliance as much of a "legal" danger in Nazi Germany as active resistance? I mean in the short run, I guess. Ideologues/Fanatics ALWAYS find a way to make non-compliance/neutrality into a crime in the long run.
I wish I knew more about him. There aren't any English sources. It says he was a librarian who had been dismissed. but at that time we (librarians) were a long way from a Library Bill of Rights...we'd just finished censoring German books here in the U.S. in WWI.
Michael Schaefer; Interned for the Duration of the War: St. Louis Public Library Censorship during World War I. Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 1 March 2019; 3 (1): 23–51.
I have late-onset hydrocephalus, which is a one-way ticket to non-Alzheimer's dementia. Where once I would have enjoyed repartee on Sippenhaftung and the history of collective familial responsibility in Germanic countries, today that merely makes my head hurt.
Today I learned that I have 500 people subscribed to this free newsletter. I had saved this entry because of what you say to coincide with this milestone.
"Totalitarian leaders have one trick up their sleeve that intellectuals have struggled to understand; that is, they are deadly serious."--Paul Hollander
While we celebrate the fact that we recognize the horror of the Nazi destruction of books, I think it's important to remember that there are still a great many people who are trying to prevent people (especially young people) from having access to important books. The number of book banning incidents in the U.S. today is really frightening. It is something that librarians, and all of us, have to fight against constantly.
The broad strokes of the book selection should have alerted us to the broad categories of the Holocaust, which took about 12 million lives, including 2 million Roma, about 800K-1M homosexuals, about the same number of communists and the list goes on. The Jews deserve a special place in our memories of the horror; they were not alone.
As many times as I have read about this I had never noted that sentimental fiction was included.
And sadly though librarians are at the forefront of defending books today, it was a German Librarian who organized the list. Could not find much about him in English.
Wolfgang Herrmann was the German librarian and member of the Nazi Party, whose blacklist provided the template for the Nazi book burnings in May 1933.
The Nazi machine was just as likely to MAKE someone into something as they were to find a ready-made candidate. "Oh, you agree with us? You'd make a great librarian."
I couldn't find out much about him. He had a librarian job from which he was dismissed, then joined the party, then assumed this role. I have German citations but hard to run down.
In librarian history there were librarians who enforced segregation in the U.S. South--Brown v. Louisiana--
The Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131 (1966) that a silent sit-in demonstration protesting segregation in a public library was protected symbolic speech under the First and 14th Amendments.
So, while today librarians are ardently for free speech and access to all-- there were those in the past who did not. As with any field with people on the wrong side of history, they are not highlighted.
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/702/brown-v-louisiana
This is true. I was recently doing research on librarians who cooperated with the Blacklist during the McCarthy Era. Only the resisters and heroes get the mention.
But here is a story in which some of the "wrong siders" are not lost to history: https://lithub.com/on-the-battle-to-desegregate-the-nations-libraries/
I wrote a textbook on public libraries in 2000 and included some of this but there wasn't much. I am making a draft to follow up. There have been recent books but only recent. I am as guilty as anyone in any field in wanting to focus on those who did the right thing, but as you point out we need to know the whole story.
Do you have a link to your work on McCarthy period? You can write me direct at klmccook@gmail.com
I never really got very far. But this thesis hints at the untold collaboration that went largely unmentioned: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2218&context=bb_pubs
I will attempt to research him in German and translate. I do not promise native quality. It was 30+ years ago that I last read it on a daily basis.
He has a Wikipedia page but all the citations are in German.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Herrmann_(librarian)
Got it.
Here's a bit of a philosophical question off the top of my head: does "movement involvement" like Wolfgang's say more in favor of resistance/"counter-movement" involvement or more in favor of deeper commitment to neutral institutional values? Would it have been better if Wolfgang had said: "The hell with y'all fascists. I resist!", opening a quick and easy door to his being removed as an obstacle or "I don't care about y'all's ideology. You can't have the books, and I'm going to resist the Communists, too. You can all go play somewhere else." Would "Sippenhaftung" have applied in such a case? Was simple non-compliance as much of a "legal" danger in Nazi Germany as active resistance? I mean in the short run, I guess. Ideologues/Fanatics ALWAYS find a way to make non-compliance/neutrality into a crime in the long run.
I wish I knew more about him. There aren't any English sources. It says he was a librarian who had been dismissed. but at that time we (librarians) were a long way from a Library Bill of Rights...we'd just finished censoring German books here in the U.S. in WWI.
Michael Schaefer; Interned for the Duration of the War: St. Louis Public Library Censorship during World War I. Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 1 March 2019; 3 (1): 23–51.
I have late-onset hydrocephalus, which is a one-way ticket to non-Alzheimer's dementia. Where once I would have enjoyed repartee on Sippenhaftung and the history of collective familial responsibility in Germanic countries, today that merely makes my head hurt.
In its solemnity and simplicity, the memorial is a superb reminder.
Today I learned that I have 500 people subscribed to this free newsletter. I had saved this entry because of what you say to coincide with this milestone.