Book Burning In History: Martin Luther To Harry Potter (PHOTOS)

Eighty years ago today, 40,000 people gathered in the Opernplatz in Berlin to witness one of the most famous book burnings in history. Books by authors including Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx, as well as Ernest Hemingway, Jack London and Thomas Mann were burnt at a Nazi gathering on May 10th 1933 attended by Joseph Goebbels, according to the website of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

The burning was a coordinated action by the Nazi German Student Association's Main Office for Press and Propaganda, which they called a ?cleansing? (S?uberung). Students marched in torchlit parades through university towns before burning "upwards of 25,000 books" throughout Germany.

That night came to symbolize the vile nature of the Nazi regime. In 1995, an underground memorial featuring empty bookshelves visible from above was installed in the square in Berlin where it took place.

Rebecca Knuth, author of Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction, told CBC News in 2010 that book burnings "are highly symbolic. When you destroy a book you are destroying your enemy and your enemy's beliefs."

That night in Berlin was just one event of a timeline of significant book burnings in history:

• Book burning in the Bible

  Burning a manuscript had more significance when it took several months to copy one, and they were hugely valuable items. Burnings are described several times in the Bible, including <a href="http://bible.cc/acts/19-19.htm" target="_blank">Acts 19:19</a>, <a href="http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611_1-Maccabees-1-56/" target="_blank">1 Maccabees 1:56</a> and <a href="http://bible.cc/jeremiah/36-27.htm" target="_blank">Jeremiah 36:27</a>.

• The trial and burning of The Talmud (1240)

  In 1240, Jewish sacred text The Talmud <a href="http://www.pims.ca/pdf/mst53.pdf" target="_blank">was put on trial in Paris, France</a> in the court of Louis IX (who became St Louis in 1297) for being harmful to Christian society. The book was found guilty and condemned by the court. All the copies in Paris that could be found were gathered together - twenty-four cartloads of scrolls - and burned.

• The burning of Martin Luther's German translation of the Bible (1520)

  <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/luther/exsurgedomine.html" target="_blank">The Papal Bull of 1520</a> ordered the burning of Martin Luther's German translation of the Bible. "These works, wherever they may be, shall be sought out carefully by the ordinaries and others [ecclesiastics and regulars], and under each and every one of the above penalties shall be burned publicly and solemnly in the presence of the clerics and people," it said.

• First book to be burned what became the USA (1650)

  The first book to be banned and burned in the New England colonies was <a href="http://www.clements.umich.edu/exhibits/online/bannedbooks/entry5.html" target="_blank"><em>The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption </em>by William Pynchon</a>, authored in 1650. It refuted the Puritan doctrine of atonement, and was condemned by the Massachusetts General Court who ruled that all copies should be burned in the center of the marketplace in Boston.

• The burning of early Braille books (1842)

  The invention of Braille, the raised alphabet for the blind, was not initially popular with everyone. <a href="http://www.afb.org/louisbraillemuseum/braillegallery.asp?GalleryID=49" target="_blank">Pierre-Armand Dufau burned 73 books</a> at the Institute for Blind Youth where he was director, believing another method to be superior. He later relented and allowed Braille into the school.

• The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (1873 onwards)

  Anthony Cornstock founded a committee called The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice within the YMCA of New York, to supervise public morality in 1873. Book burning was on its seal (left), and <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/service/mss/eadxmlmss/eadpdfmss/2012/ms012088.pdf" target="_blank">according to the Library of Congress,</a> "it became prominent as a monitor and censor of literary works and popular literature." It inspired the passing of The Cornstock Act,<a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=017/llsl017.db&recNum=0639" target="_blank"> a Federal Law that made it illegal to own, sell or send through the mail obscene material. </a> <a href="http://trquinn.com/a-brief-history-of-book-burning/" target="_blank">It is said that</a> 15 tons of books, printing plates and photographs were burned under the law.

• Largest book burning in history (1992)

  On 17 May 1992 the Serb-led army burned down the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, destroying more than five thousand manuscripts dating back to medieval times, recording the history of Bosnia. Three months later, on August 25th, the National and University Library in Sarajevo was attacked by Serb forces. Two days later, the library (shown here) had been destroyed. <a href="https://moodle.hampshire.edu/file.php/1223/ZecoBosnLibr.pdf" target="_blank"> It is estimated that 1.2 million books were destroyed</a>, the largest book burning in history.

• Book burning in Latin America (Late 20th Century)

  The book <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Burning-Books-Haig-Bosmajian/dp/0786422084/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368046599&sr=1-1&keywords=0786422084" target="_blank">Burning Books</a></em> by Haig Bosmajian reports that in 1976, "a great book-burning... was shown on television" in Argentina. At the same time, Chile's widespread government-endorsed book burning, including books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which led to an official condemnation by the American Library Assocation. Libraries in Uruguay were being "purified" at this time, and military governments in El Salvador in the 1970s and 80s also burned books they considered subversive.

• 6,000 volumes of poetry burned in Egypt (2001)

  In 2001, 6,000 volumes of poetry 8th-century writer Abu Nuwas <a href="http://www.merip.org/mer/mer219/take-them-out-ballgame" target="_blank">were reportedly burned</a> by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture for their homoerotic content.

• Harry Potter books burned (early 2000s)

  In the early 2000s, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1735623.stm" target="_blank">Harry Potter books were burned for their "satanic" content</a> in New Mexico, Michigan and Pennsylvania among other places. It's far from the only bestseller to suffer that fate - in 2006, <a href="http://www.internetwritingjournal.com/in-ceccano-italy-i-the-da-vinci-code-i-524061" target="_blank">Dan Brown's <em>The Da Vinci Code</em> was burned in Italy</a> for blasphemous content.

• Copies of the Quran accidentally burned in Afghanistan (2012)

  In February 2012, US troops at Bagram Base burned 315 religious books that were apparently being used by detainees to pass messages - including copies of the Quran. As soon as the mistake was realized, <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-08-27/afghanistan-quran-burning/57357208/1" target="_blank">water was doused on the fire,</a> but four copies had already been badly burned. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/24/us-afghanistan-korans-idUSTRE81K09T20120224" target="_blank">Twenty-three people were killed in protests across Afghanistan</a> following the error.

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