#bookburning — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bookburning, aggregated by home.social.
-
#52booksin52weeks 32. Publisher Starts w/B - Ballantine - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury #ClassicSciFi #censorship #conformity #humanconnection #technology #PowerOfBooks #alienation #bookburning #history #booktok #bookstagram #booksky #gamemaster #gamemastersbookclub #ttrpgpodcast https://www.k-squareproductions.com/gmbc
-
A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt
In the democracies of the world, the passion for freedom of speech and of thought is always accentuated when there is an effort anywhere to keep ideas away from people and to prevent them from making their own decisions. One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education and thus make it impossible for them to understand what is going on in the world as a whole. […] The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books, but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1943-05-11), “My Day”More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-eleanor/81…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #eleanorroosevelt #bookburning #education #freepress #freespeech #freedomofexpression #freedomofspeech #freedomofthepress #freedomofthought #information #media #oppression #thoughtcontrol #tyranny #understanding
-
A Nazi-supporting librarian, Allison Davis, Elizabeth Stubbs Davis, and mass book burning in “Origin” film
Allison Davis (on left) and Elizabeth Stubbs Davis (on right) search for certain books, in a flashback scene (of sorts) narrated by Isabel Wilkerson. This is the beginning of the scene, but it goes further than this, as I’ll explain in this post. Allison says the library is “beautiful” even though it doesn’t have the book they are looking for.A pivotal scene of Origin, a 2023 biographical drama film by Ava DuVernay, a Black woman and director known for the historical drama Selma (2014), the documentary entitled 13th (2016), other films. Origin is based on Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents and her journey to write this book, takes place in a library in Germany, in 1933. In this post, I’ll talk about that scene, and another, which take place in a library, in this film.
The film shows Allison Davis and Elizabeth Stubbs Davis, a married Black couple, in Berlin, Germany, in 1933, who are studying there. They are looking for books by Erich Maria Remarque, at Germany’s premier library, and find nothing. Elizabeth says she could get lost in these books (and ideas) “forever” and Allison says the library is “beautiful.” They walk through the reading room, past four German patrons, with White skin, and are having a fun time. The librarian asks for their library cards, as they are checking out two books, which seems normal, and they comply. And then she asks for their passports! Again, they comply, and a patron watches them.
The librarian pages through their passports, he asks when Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front will be back in the library. She looks at him, does not answer, and stamps the books. The same patron, as before, looks at them, clearly concerned.She is serving as the enforcer of rules and social norms here.
She does not answer. Instead, she asks for their passports, stamps their books, and they go on their way, as everyone watches them. He looks at her, worryingly, as does his wife, Elizabeth. She slides the books over to them, holds their passports, almost with concern, putting them down on the table. What was to come is that they would witness events that would change the world.
The librarian’s demands of her patrons. The first one (shown in the image in the upper left) is reasonable, but the other one (in the upper right), their passports, is NOT reasonable! In the third image (in the lower left), she looks at Allison when he asks about All Quiet in the Western Front. In the fourth image (in the lower right), she stamps their books, ending their interaction.Later in the film, Wilkerson herself goes to a library. A helpful librarian, a White German man, shows her the book she requested, with a list from October 1935, noting a part of the text showing that all of Remarque’s books would be destroyed. Later, she looks on the library stacks. Right after this, it flashes back to the past. As Elizabeth and Allison are on the steps outside the library, a friendly White German man named Erich Kästner overhears they are asking about Remarque but says he couldn’t catch the librarian’s answer. He asks them if they know what is happening in Germany. They don’t.He tells them that “everything is being torn apart.”
Later that night, he brings them to the infamous book burning, likely when the Berlin chapter of the German Student Union made an organized attack on Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sex Research on May 6, 1933. As the Nazis march around and chant, a stack of burning books is shown, and some holding torches. One person shouts about ending the period of “exaggerated Jewish intellectualism,” and people agree wholeheartedly, raising their hands in Nazi salutes, claiming that the German soul can now “breathe again,” and to end “moral corruption.” A truck approaches the stack of burning books, with people taking books out of the back and throwing them onto the fire, all to protect “decency” and “morality.”
In the present, Wilkerson walks into the square where the burning happened and a German woman says there are memorials to nearly everyone victimized by the Nazis, no gate or entry sign, open day and night, standing “to bear witness.” The film flashes back again, showing Germans throwing tens of thousands of books into a fire, burning them to a crisp, as they shout. A German woman in the present says “20,000 books were lost that night,” while Elizabeth and Allison are growing more concerned and horrified. Kästner suggests they leave Germany and go somewhere safe (their home) instead, which they agree with. The film comes back to the present, with audio of someone saying to burn the books of Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Mann, Ernest Glaser, Remarque, Karl Renner, and Kästner. Also, empty bookshelves, where books would be, is displayed, symbolic of all the books that were lost that night.
The German woman also shares a quote by a German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine: “when you burn books, you end up burning men.” All of this makes one thing clear: the strict librarian depicted is aligned with this book burning. Elianna Bernstein, the main protagonist of Bibliophile Princess, would be horrified by all of this, as a person who detested book burning and directly called those who did it monsters. She is right! More than that, the librarian is even more aligned with oppression than Francis Clara Censordoll in Moral Orel, or Cletus Bookbinder in Rocky & Bullwinkle, to give two examples I can think of at this point.
One of the scenes in the film shows the horrifying book burning in Berlin in 1933. I had another screenshot from this film in mind as well, but this is the more poignant one.The film also notes that Elizabeth and Allison cut short their advanced studies at the University of Berlin (obviously!) and they began their research for a book which would be entitled Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class in a Southern City. The book, which came out in 1941, would also involve research in collaboration with their White colleagues, Burleigh and Mary R. Gardner, who were Harvard researchers. The book would serve as a major influence on Wilkerson (and others) and her work.
The two librarians noted in the cast list at the end of the film: Nazi Librarian and Berlin Librarian, played by Cristin König and Matthias Miller respectfully. I have highlighted both with yellow boxes for emphasis. The librarian in this film could, possibly, be described as a bit of a spinster, but is more of an anti-social librarian, which Jennifer Snoek-Brown defines as hoarding knowledge, wearing conservative clothing, having poor social skills, is very unfriendly, and “rates the library and its rules above the public.” This librarian is more than that, however: she is an enforcer of Nazi agenda, a footsoldier of oppression, and doesn’t seem to care about that!
I did deeper dive and found the screenplay, which notes even more library scenes, including Wilkerson at the New York Public Library, noting her tenderly pulling a book from the grand shelf. It also shows that the aforementioned library scene was at the Berlin University Library, noting that Allison and Elizabeth were “extremely light-skinned African-Americans who could pass for white on first glance,” and it also depicts them as even more romantic than the film. Interestingly, this screenplay has the librarian as a White man rather than a White woman. I wonder why it was changed. It noes he views them with suspicion, with the screenplay saying he “reviews the passport and card as if it’s a matter of national security”! The librarian almost interrogates Allison, and Elizabeth notes that she, and her husband, work with Dr. Diedrich Westermann. [1]
The screenplay also notes that the librarian places the books on the counter, and waves the next person over. Right after this is their conversation with Kästner, includes more dialogue from Elizabeth than in the film. then the book burning scene happens at the Bebelplatz, with open-bed trucks (unlike covered ones on the film) filled with books, with a crowd of 40,000 people. The screenplay shows more dialogue from a Nazi student organizer, specifically calling out Sigmund Freud, Erich Remarque, Georg Bernhard, Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, and Kästner. The scene plays out pretty similarly from there as in the film, except that Joseph Goebbels is introduced (in the film he is shown but not named directly), who calls out “intellectual garbage.” The same scene depicting Wilkerson meeting with the White British woman, Nigella, is shown as well. In those ways the film is similar. [2]
The screenplay, like in the film, continues the story of Allison and Elizabeth, noting they fled Germany when Hitler took power, as they had seen “the Nazis burn books and jail teachers,” which gave Allison new insights into the “nature of hate” and inspiring “him to study the process of injustice.” There are other mentions of libraries as well, like Wilkerson researching in a library, a gala at the New York Public Library which Wilkerson attends with her husband, Brett, and another one where she doesn’t. There’s also a “cozy library room” where Bhimrao Ambedkar reads with intensity in 1918. [3]
As it turns out, Kästner did, in real-life, actually attend the book burning. One biography says that he was “among the few authors, perhaps the only, who was present, when the Nazis burned books in Berlin on May 10, 1933, his own included,” but that he was “arrested by the Gestapo in 1934 and 1937 because he used to cross the border regularly to consult his Swiss publisher.”
In terms of the actors, Cristin König and Matthias Miller, they are both very talented. König is known for her roles in many German-language films and TV series since the late 1980s, while this appears to be Miller’s first role in the film, if IMDB is right. While König posted about this role on social media here and here, she never did so with much depth in her posts, even though other posts show her as very anti-Nazi, which is funny considering her character in the film! But, perhaps that was a reason she took the role? I haven’t seen any critical commentary of her role in the film when I searched for this, which is unfortunate, considering her key role!
Apparently a librarian named Kashif Andrew Graham introduced the film in one location and another, Mary Anne, shared her thoughts on the film. The latter did not mention either librarian character. Why?. I don’t understand that at all. How could they miss this? I hope Jennifer Snoek-Brown writes a post on Reel Librarians about these scenes as well, considering it was added to her master list of English-language films back in April 2024. I’d love to see her analysis.
© 2024-2025 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[1] DuVernay, Ava. “Origin” screenplay, Jun. 25, 2024, accessed on Sept. 9, 2024, pp. 36-38.
[2] Ibid, 38-41.
[3] Ibid, 87. On the previous page, it also describes them as “the couple we followed in Berlin during the Nazi book burning.” For the other mentions, see pages 16, 25, 32-33, and 102.
#AllQuietOnTheWesternFront #BibliophilePrincess #bookBurning #books #CletusBookbinder #femaleLibrarians #JenniferSnoekBrown #maleLibrarians #MoralOrel #Nazis #NYPL #oppression #OriginFilm_ #passports #RockyBullwinkle #teachers #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhiteWomen
-
"So instead of saying #NonCitizen or #migrant, they're supposed to say #alien. Instead of saying #integration, they're supposed to say #assimilation, things like that. And this particular worker described it as the most #1984 thing that they've ever gotten. And this is happening all across the #government"
#Orwellian #Fahrenheit451 #Dystopia #RayBradbury #NeoMarcarthyism #ideology #repression #newspeak #FreedomOfSpeech #ThoughtControl #Censorship #HUAC #GreatPurge #BookBurning #Wiping #Digital #Enshittification #NineteenEightyFour #BrainRot
#WhatNext | "Why #Trump ’s #DataPurge is a Digital Book Burning"
https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2025/02/donald-trump-is-changing-america-down-to-the-code
-
"But just how far back does this policy of thinly-veiled thought control go?"
#bookburning #thoughtcontrol #politicalideology #history #modernpolitics
What Was the First Banned Book in History? https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-was-the-first-banned-book-in-history
-
Don't be '#weak and #gay,' #Missouri #Republican #candidate says in #Homophobic #campaign #video
#SecretaryofState hopeful #ValentinaGomez was already #infamous for a #video showing her #burning #LGBTQ-themed #books.
#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #Censorship #Bookburning #Religion #RepublicanParty #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #Genocide #Discrimination #Homophobia #Transphobia #ThePartyOfHate #EmptyThePews
https://www.advocate.com/politics/missouri-valentina-gomez-gay-weak
-
The 1933 #BookBurning on #Berlin's (then) #Opernplatz was part of a campaign by the German Student Union.
But it was not (by far) not the only one, as the @VerbrannteOrte project explicitly illustrates with its annotated atlas of #ScorchedPlaces:
-
One of this city's most haunting #monuments isn't even particular monumental: An unsuspicious window in the middle of #Berlin’s Bebelplatz (former #Opernplatz) - bookshelves in the ground.
Empty bookshelves.
Commemorating the #BookBurning which took place right here #OnThisDay, May 10th in 1933.
-
#Trump #Campaign #Ads Are #Monetizing Pro-#Nazi #Content on #Rumble.
#TeamTrump blames the #streaming #platform’s #algorithm for placing its #campaignads against a #video calling #Nazi #bookburning “#justified” and “#awesome”
-
#Trump #Campaign #Ads Are #Monetizing Pro-#Nazi #Content on #Rumble.
#TeamTrump blames the #streaming #platform’s #algorithm for placing its #campaignads against a #video calling #Nazi #bookburning “#justified” and “#awesome”
-
#Trump #Campaign #Ads Are #Monetizing Pro-#Nazi #Content on #Rumble.
#TeamTrump blames the #streaming #platform’s #algorithm for placing its #campaignads against a #video calling #Nazi #bookburning “#justified” and “#awesome”
-
#Trump #Campaign #Ads Are #Monetizing Pro-#Nazi #Content on #Rumble.
#TeamTrump blames the #streaming #platform’s #algorithm for placing its #campaignads against a #video calling #Nazi #bookburning “#justified” and “#awesome”
-
#Trump #Campaign #Ads Are #Monetizing Pro-#Nazi #Content on #Rumble.
#TeamTrump blames the #streaming #platform’s #algorithm for placing its #campaignads against a #video calling #Nazi #bookburning “#justified” and “#awesome”
