It’s been 90 years since the National Socialists burned more than 20,000 books in many German cities that they considered “un-German”. In Munich, too, on May 10, 1933, they threw the works of writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Annette Kolb, Elisabeth Castonier, Thomas Mann, Gertrud Kolmar and Irmgard Keun onto a pyre on Königsplatz. Many of them had to flee Germany in the years that followed, and many a work was forgotten.
Organizations, institutions and artists like Wolfram P. Kastner have been fighting oblivion with commemorative events for many years – and this year there are particularly many. The big readings on Königsplatz and Odeonsplatz are already traditional. At 10 a.m. Kastner will singe a burn mark in the lawn on the Königsplatz, followed by five-minute readings from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. under the title “Munich reads – from burnt books”. Mayor Dieter Reiter took over the patronage this year and reads like, among others, cultural advisor Anton Biebl on Königsplatz and Odeonsplatz at the local “Reading against forgetting” (12 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.).
Numerous events accompany these major campaigns. The evening commemorates in the NS Documentation Center “First the books burned” because scientific works were also burned in 1933, including all books from the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Medical historian Rainer Herr and journalist Magdalena Pulz will talk about how the Nazi regime dealt with gender diversity (7 p.m.).
They also commemorate with readings and lectures Munich adult education center and the Munich City Library. Among other things, the author Bianca Schaalburg presents her graphic novel “The scent of the pines” in the Motorama beforewhich deals with the guilt and responsibility of a German family and was awarded the German Youth Literature Prize in 2022 as the best non-fiction book (7 p.m.).
The fact that the burned books also included works by the politically committed writer Erika Mann prompted the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität to launch its “Erika Mann Lectures” (7 p.m.). Wiebke Puls will read texts by Erika Mann in the main building on Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, and the author Asal Dardan, who as the daughter of Iranian parents was herself shaped by the experience of exile, will speak to show that “there are always people who interfered and put up a fight”.