Burning of the books

Infamous in the rise of the National Socialists or Nazi Party to power was the day of the “burning of the books” in Berlin. The photo (below) shows the plaza at the front of the Humbolt University Library, off Unter den Linden, where the books were burned.


Organised by the student body, the banned books consumed in the fires included works by such notables as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.

To record this act of ignorant ideology-based destruction, a memorial in the form of a white room lined with empty bookshelves visible through a glass pane has been erected at the side of the plaza.