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IN BERLIN, ON 10 May 1933, a bonfire was held on Unter den Linden, the capital’s most important thoroughfare. It was a site of great symbolic resonance: opposite the university and adjacent to St Hedwig’s Cathedral, the Berlin State Opera House, the Royal Palace and Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s beautiful war memorial. Watched by a cheering crowd of almost forty thousand a group of students ceremonially marched up to the bonfire carrying the bust of a Jewish intellectual, Magnus Hirschfeld (founder of the groundbreaking Institute of Sexual Sciences). Chanting the ‘Feuersprüche’, a series of fire incantations, they threw the bust on top of thousands of volumes from the institute’s library, which had joined books by Jewish and other ‘un-German’ writers (gays and communists prominent among them) that had been seized from bookshops and libraries. Around the fire stood rows of young men in Nazi uniforms giving the Heil Hitler salute. The students were keen to curry favour with the new government and this book-burning was a carefully planned publicity stunt.
Burning the Books
Richard Ovenden
Most ideas will not stand the test of time, while others might become the seed for a major project.
How to Take Smart Notes
Sönke Ahrens
On balance, they are much more character disordered than neurotic. To the degree they might have some neurosis, they deceive themselves about their true character and their covertly-aggressive conduct. To the degree they are character disordered, the more they actively attempt to deceive only their intended victims.
In Sheep's Clothing
George K. Simon Ph.D.
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