Libraries under National Socialism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Nazis practiced at all library branches out in Germany far-reaching political influence. The scientific processing, including NS provenance research , did not begin until around 1980.

Beginnings

On May 10, 1933, public book burnings took place in many German university towns , with some of the burned copies coming from academic or public libraries. The “black lists” created by Wolfgang Herrmann were the basis for this, which he gradually passed on to the German student body for their “ action against the un-German spirit ” from April 26, 1933 . On April 26, 1933, a preliminary “list of books worth burning” appeared in the “ Berlin Illustrated Night Edition ”, which was soon replaced by a more thorough index. These lists were used to search the university and institute libraries - from May 6, 1933, bookshops and lending libraries by student raids - and removed so-called “harmful and undesirable literature”. The public city and public libraries were encouraged to "clean up" their holdings themselves and to hand over the discarded books to the student bodies for the public book burnings on May 10th.

The interference of the National Socialist state in the library system took place on three levels:

  • Inventory build-up → "cleaning up" the inventory and replenishing library inventory with looted items
  • Personnel policy → personal "cleansing"
  • Librarian Organizations → Synchronization

Scientific libraries

The synchronization of the academic library system began when on May 1, 1934, with the establishment of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and National Education, the cultural sovereignty of the federal states passed to the Reich. In the ministry, the “Referee for Academic Librarianship” and the “Reich Advisory Board for Library Matters” were entrusted with matters relating to German librarianship. The "Deutsche Bücherei" Leipzig , which at that time was one of the largest scientific libraries and had the tasks of a national library , was subordinated to the Propaganda Ministry. The Association of German Librarians became a professional association that was firmly integrated into the regime. In 1933 it had already been incorporated into the Reichsschrifttumskammer and from 1935 the association's statutes were redesigned according to the Führer principle .

The regime exerted varying degrees of influence on the various library areas. In contrast to the public libraries, the academic libraries were exposed to fewer interventions and measures when building up their holdings. On the contrary, the holdings segregated in the public libraries were "left" to the state libraries for incorporation. Then there were the confiscated libraries of forbidden organizations, e. B. Union Libraries . The holdings of emigrated or deported Jews were also given to the academic libraries. Overall, the National Socialist policy increased the number of academic libraries in their holdings. This increase in inventory was only limited by the shortage of foreign exchange.

"Corrosive" literature had to be treated specially within the holdings. It was identified and secreted on the basis of List I of harmful and undesirable literature . Secretion meant that the literature had to be kept in a special room and only a small group of people had access to it. This included members of the academic teaching staff and the NSDAP or users who were known to be reliable and could credibly assure that the literature was only used for scientific purposes. In the "Deutsche Bücherei" Leipzig there was a Gestapo office for this purpose , which monitored the secretion of the holdings and their use. The secreted holdings were marked “secret” or “blocked” in the catalogs.

The regime had a stronger impact on the inventory and national bibliography . Initially, the listing and display of indexed literature in the national bibliography was banned. The Jewish literature that was not listed between 1933 and 1945 was listed in a supplement to the national bibliography after the war. The Prussian General Catalog was funded , which was expanded to become the German General Catalog in 1935. This enabled the ideology of the whole state to be supported and federalism to be suppressed.

As early as 1933, the National Socialists carried out the so-called "personal cleansing". The basis for this was the law for the restoration of the professional civil service . In the Prussian State Library, this affected eight librarians of Jewish origin, and in the scientific city library in Frankfurt, seven librarians. The director of the Darmstadt State Library, Hanns W. Eppelsheimer , who became the founding director of the German Library after the war, was dismissed in 1933 . From 1937 the "non-Aryan-tainted" officials also lost their jobs. In 1938 a uniform training regulation for the Reich was issued, which made NSDAP membership a prerequisite for training.

Important persons

Public libraries

The public library system before 1933 had been shaped by the so-called dispute over the direction of the world for over 20 years . Following the older library movement , a dispute over the direction of the public library broke out. The liberal idea of a service- and user-oriented library ( Erwin Ackerknecht ) was the library pedagogy with their idea of education ( Walter Hofmann opposite). This vacuum could be used as an instrument by the National Socialists. So the public libraries were used in their entirety as a propaganda instrument, because here the librarian conveyed the supposedly right and good things to the people. As a people's pedagogue, the librarian became the “spiritual leader” who in turn had to submit to the leader principle. The Association of German People's librarians as the Association of German Librarians in the 1933 Reichsschrifttumskammer incorporated and the Articles of Association according to the leader principle redesigned. The association dissolved in 1939 and a “ library group ” remained with the chamber . The alignment of the library organization had begun and was continued on September 1, 1935 with the establishment of the " Reichsstelle für Volksstümliches Büchereiwesen ". It served as the central monitoring body and issued u. a. on October 26, 1937 the "Guidelines for the People's Library". The guidelines laid down the technical supervision of the Reichsstelle; they contained the planning for the expansion of the library system and regulated the cooperation between the libraries and the party.

The holdings of the public libraries were exposed to massive interference by the National Socialist regime. The book burnings in May 1933 should be mentioned first. After that, however, the measures against “harmful and undesirable literature” became more systematic. There were different places, e.g. B. entrusted the Reichsschrifttumskammer with the monitoring and control of the "inventory cleaning" and later the inventory building. Some of the separated holdings were handed over to the academic libraries for incorporation and secrecy. On average, 10–20% of the inventory was discarded, including, in particular, “corrosive” literature, “ asphalt literature ”, literature that “ rubs off the experience of soldiers at the front”, literature that “glorifies” the Weimar Republic . The holdings were built up using lists that were uniform across the empire, which led to a continuous unification of the library holdings throughout the empire.

The "personal cleansing" hit the library staff with great severity. Employees who were considered unreliable or who were undesirable for party political (communists, social democrats, active trade unionists) or for racial reasons, such as Helene Nathan or Erwin Ackerknecht , were sometimes robbed of their livelihood. Only a few librarians went into the resistance ; B. Lotte Bergtel-Schleif .

Important persons

Denominational libraries

The church libraries were also subjected to paternalism by the National Socialist regime, especially since the relationship between National Socialism and the Christian religion was ambivalent. In 1934 there were 5,500 Catholic libraries with 4.4 million volumes and 4,200 Protestant libraries with 1.3 million volumes. The state libraries were also allowed to carry out the “cleanups” carried out in the academic and public libraries in the denominational libraries. The libraries were also required to provide only books with religious content linked to the denomination. Later there were attempts to eliminate church library work entirely.

Wiki project on the topic

Further information on the subject is summarized on a wiki project page : Wikipedia: Wiki project Librarians and Libraries under National Socialism

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Above all in the context of the Wolfenbüttel working group for library history at that time, s. the references Peter Vodosek, Manfred Komorowski
  2. ↑ Robert Langer: The ways of stolen books: the Bautzen City Library and the Hertie Collection . Dresden, ISBN 978-3-9814149-3-6 .
  3. ↑ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
  4. ↑ Kuttner, Sven: The librarian, the university and the past. Joachim Kirchner and the Munich University Library (pdf; 69 kB)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.lostart.de  
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Thauer, Peter Vodosek: History of the public library in Germany. Second edition, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990. p. 143
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Thauer, Peter Vodosek: History of the public library in Germany. Second edition, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1990. pp. 145ff.

literature

  • Stefan Alker, Christina Köstner, Markus Stumpf: Libraries in the Nazi era: provenance research and library history , V&R unipress, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 9783899714500
  • Martin Bartenberger, Christoph Wendler: National Socialist Library Policy in Vienna. Municipal libraries and the Central Library Association in comparison. (Search for traces. Journal for the history of adult education and science popularization, vol. 20/21, issue 1–4, Vienna 2012, pp. 335ff), ISBN 978-3-902167-14-9
  • Hans-Gerd Happel: The scientific library system under National Socialism with special consideration of the university libraries. Saur, Munich 1989 (contributions to library theory and library history 1), ISBN 3-598-22170-3
  • Ulrich Hohoff: Scientific librarians as victims of the Nazi dictatorship. An overview of 250 résumés since 1933. Part 1: The layoffs . In o-bib. The open library journal / published by VDB , 2 (2015), 1–32 doi : 10.5282 / o-bib / 2015H2S1-32
  • Uwe Jochum: Short library history. Reclam, Stuttgart, 3rd, verb. and exp. Edition 2007 (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek 17667), ISBN 978-3-15-017667-2
  • Michael Knoche, Wolfgang Schmitz (Ed.): Scientific librarians in National Socialism. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2011 (Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesen 46), ISBN 978-3-447-06407-1
  • Sven Kuttner, Bernd Reifenberg (ed.): The library memory. Aspects of the culture of remembrance of brown times in the German library system. Univ.-Bibl. Marburg 2004 (publications of the University Library Marburg 119), ISBN 3-8185-0392-3
  • Robert Langer: The ways of stolen books: the Bautzen City Library and the Hertie Collection . Dresden, ISBN 978-3-9814149-3-6
  • Margaret F. Stieg: Public libraries in Nazi Germany . University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 1992, ISBN 0817351558
  • Wolfgang Thauer, Peter Vodosek : History of the public library in Germany. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2., ext. Edition 1990, ISBN 3-447-02974-9
  • Peter Vodosek, Manfred Komorowski (Hrsg.): Libraries during National Socialism. Part 1–2. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1989–1992 (Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens 16), ISBN 3-447-02947-1 and ISBN 3-447-03308-8

Web links