Wolfgang Herrmann (Librarian)

Wolfgang Herrmann (born March 14, 1904 in Alsleben (Saale) ; † April 1945 near Brno ) was a German librarian and National Socialist whose "black lists" provided the template for the book burnings of the " Action Against the Un-German Spirit " in 1933 in Germany.

Life

As a student, Herrmann became a member of the German National Youth Association. From 1922 he studied modern history in Munich and received his doctorate in 1928. In 1929 Herrmann worked in the public library in Breslau and was committed to a library policy in the National Socialist sense.

In 1931 he moved to the Stettin City Library , where he was released in October of the same year. Also in 1931 he applied for membership in the NSDAP , where he sympathized with the wing around the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser . In 1933, the then 29-year-old headed the Central Office for German Libraries in Berlin . In April 1934 Herrmann became library director in Königsberg .

In 1936 Herrmann became a full-time political director within the NSDAP.

The creation of the blacklist

In April 1933, a “committee for the reorganization of Berlin's city and public libraries” met in Berlin, to which 29-year-old Herrmann also belonged. Herrmann had already worked on lists of literature to be discarded in previous years, which he has now brought to the newly established committee. These first Herrmann lists initially only had the function of blocking the indexed works for lending in libraries. In these first lists, Herrmann also recommended Hitler - a German fate for Ernst Niekisch and Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm the Third by Weigand von Miltenberg (pseudonym of Herbert Blank ).

He also expressed disdain for Hitler's Mein Kampf , which is why the NSDAP party press agitated against him shortly after the book burnings. A party court case that he himself initiated on December 12, 1936, was discontinued on the basis of an order by Hitler on April 27, 1938.

At the beginning of 1933, the German Student Union (DSt) also turned to Herrmann with the request to provide his list for the organization of the book burning of May 10, 1933. This “ list of harmful and undesirable literature ” formed the basis for the National Socialist book burning .

Nazi research over the past three decades has shown that neither the book burning of May 10, 1933, nor the black list drawn up by Wolfgang Herrmann were commissioned or directed by the “ Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda ”.

The organization of the book burning was largely in the hands of the German student body (which was certainly supported by the Reich Ministry), and Herrmann's Black List was also the result of the self-initiative of the staunch National Socialist librarian; It was not until the following years that Goebbels and his ministry took over sole control of literature policy - after lengthy power struggles with Alfred Rosenberg.

Blacklist and book burning

On the basis of his "black lists", Herrmann created further lists of authors, which he then successively forwarded to the German student body from April 26, 1933 for their " action against the un-German spirit ". On March 26, 1933, the first “List of books worth burning” appeared in the “Berlin Night Edition”. It was preliminary and incomplete and was soon replaced by a more thorough index. With the help of these lists, the university and institute libraries were searched and, from May 6, 1933, bookshops and lending libraries were raided by student raiders and robbed of 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.

On May 16, 1933, Herrmann's black list was subsequently published as the first official black list of forbidden books for Prussia in the Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel .

See also

• List of banned authors during the National Socialist era

literature

• Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 237.
• Gerhard Sauder (Ed.): The book burning. May 10, 1933 . Carl Hanser, Munich and Vienna 1983, p. 103ff.
• Siegfried Schliebs: Prohibited, pursued burned… Wolfgang Herrmann and his “Black List. Beautiful Literature ”from May 1933 - The case of the public librarian Dr. Wolfgang Hermann. In: Hermann Haarmann, Walter Huder , Klaus Siebenhaar (eds.): "That was just a prelude ..." - Book burning Germany 1933: requirements and consequences . Catalog for the exhibition of the same name at the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) 1983. Medusa Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-88602-076-2 , pp. 442–444.
• Ulrich Walberer (Ed.): May 10, 1933. Book burning in Germany and the consequences. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1983.
• Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 , pp. 17-20
• In those days ... writers between the Reichstag fire and book burning. A documentation. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig and Weimar 1983.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Siegfried Schliebs: The case of the public librarian Wolfgang Herrmann . In: Akademie der Künste (Ed.): That was just a prelude ...: Book burning Germany 1933. Requirements and consequences . Medusa-Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin / Vienna, 1983, ISBN 3-88602-076-2 , p. 442ff.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Weidermann 2008, introduction (PDF; 51 kB).
3. ↑ Biographical data 1899 - 1958, supporter of the Strasser wing in the NSDAP, wrote this ironic book about Hitler before 1933. After 1945 at the NWDR , until his past became known. Usually it is written that he was imprisoned in a concentration camp from 1939 to 1945. Joseph Wulf , Culture in the Third Reich: literature and poetry, Ullstein, Frankfurt 1989 ISBN 3550070608 pp 456-459, prints two reports of the Blank from the winter of 1933 from the wording, and also two letters he as a censor for Hans Hinkel wrote by controlling the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden . Blank was imprisoned on or after June 30, 1934, during the so-called Röhm Putsch . At the end of 1932, Hinkel wrote rather negatively about the character Blanks, the source was available to Wulf.
4. ↑ Anselm Faust: The universities and the “un-German spirit”. The book burning on May 10, 1933 and its history . In: Akademie der Künste (Ed.): That was just a prelude ...: Book burning Germany 1933. Requirements and consequences . Medusa-Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin / Vienna, 1983, ISBN 3-88602-076-2 , pp. 31–50, here p. 39.
5. ↑ Anselm Faust: The universities and the “un-German spirit”. The book burning on May 10, 1933 and its history . In: Akademie der Künste (Ed.): That was just a prelude ...: Book burning Germany 1933. Requirements and consequences . Medusa-Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin / Vienna, 1983, ISBN 3-88602-076-2 , p. 31–50, here p. 38.
   Gerhard Sauder: Preparation of the “Action against the un-German spirit” . In: Gerhard Sauder (ed.): The burning of books: May 10, 193 . Hanser, Munich / Vienna, 1983, ISBN 3-446-13802-1 , pp. 69-102.
6. ↑ Birgit Ebbert: Book Burning 1933 . On shoa.de .