Book burning refers to the ritual destruction of books or other written materials by fire. Often carried out in public areas, book burning represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials being destroyed. During the nineteenth century in Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Regime strategically implemented this method of oppression to demoralize any potential protests and to spark fierce nationalism into the hearts of the German people. Among those works burned were the writings of nineteenth-century Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote, "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people." This quote taken from the play Almansor embodies the scope of dejection
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Art propaganda played a key role in shaping the events leading to the Holocaust. Julius Stricher's picture book, The Toadstool, spewed anti-Semitism to school children while posters and political cartoons promoted German national pride for the war effort and validated deep rooted feelings of anti-Semitism for the adults. By contrasting the Entartete Kunst exhibit with the art in the Grosse Deutsche Kunst, the Nazis coached Germans to connect modern painting with the "degenerate", decadent, the unhealthy and distorted, and therefore the “Jew." Artists once reveled in the labeling of their work as being "mad" and "insane" in their quest for a new form of art. Under the Nazis, those labels often had fatal consequences, resulting in the confiscation and destruction of works, and sometimes …show more content…
"Books are not absolutely dead things," he wrote in Areopagitica - his celebrated attack on censorship - in 1644, "but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are." Anyone who kills a man, Milton said, kills "a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself".
It has been nearly seventy years since the Nazi whirlwind took hold, sweeping the lives of millions before it. Never had works of art been so important to a political movement and never had they been moved about on such a vast scale. Many were lost and many are still in hiding. Although the effects of Hitler’s oppressive method still remains in the world, it undoubtedly was effective in oppressing the non-Aryan Germans, and strengthening the image of the “Aryan
Art propaganda played a key role in shaping the events leading to the Holocaust. Julius Stricher's picture book, The Toadstool, spewed anti-Semitism to school children while posters and political cartoons promoted German national pride for the war effort and validated deep rooted feelings of anti-Semitism for the adults. By contrasting the Entartete Kunst exhibit with the art in the Grosse Deutsche Kunst, the Nazis coached Germans to connect modern painting with the "degenerate", decadent, the unhealthy and distorted, and therefore the “Jew." Artists once reveled in the labeling of their work as being "mad" and "insane" in their quest for a new form of art. Under the Nazis, those labels often had fatal consequences, resulting in the confiscation and destruction of works, and sometimes …show more content…
"Books are not absolutely dead things," he wrote in Areopagitica - his celebrated attack on censorship - in 1644, "but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are." Anyone who kills a man, Milton said, kills "a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself".
It has been nearly seventy years since the Nazi whirlwind took hold, sweeping the lives of millions before it. Never had works of art been so important to a political movement and never had they been moved about on such a vast scale. Many were lost and many are still in hiding. Although the effects of Hitler’s oppressive method still remains in the world, it undoubtedly was effective in oppressing the non-Aryan Germans, and strengthening the image of the “Aryan