---
title: The 1933 book burnings and Nazi control of publishing
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/
description: in spring 1933 the German Student Association posted twelve theses against the "un-German spirit", then on 10 May burned books by Jewish, left-wing…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# The 1933 book burnings and Nazi control of publishing

At a glance

In spring 1933 the German Student Association posted twelve theses against the "un-German spirit", then on 10 May burned books by Jewish, left-wing, liberal and pacifist authors in university towns across Germany…

- **When:** April 12, 1933
- **Actor:** Deutsche Studentenschaft…
- **Target:** German readers, students, librarians, booksellers and journalists…
- **Confidence:** **high** Multiple independent open sources, low disagreement about the facts
- **Techniques:** [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/)
- **Regime:** [Nazi Germany](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/nazi-germany/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Deutsche Studentenschaft (German Student Association); Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels; the Reich Chamber of Culture and its Reich Literature Chamber
- **Target:** German readers, students, librarians, booksellers and journalists; Jewish, socialist, communist, liberal and pacifist authors and editors

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nazi-book-burnings-1933/#sources)

On this page

> **Content note.** This page quotes antisemitic slogans and official labels from 1933 in the original German with English translations, because the wording is the evidence.

**In one line:** in spring 1933 the German Student Association posted twelve theses against the "un-German spirit", then on 10 May burned books by Jewish, left-wing, liberal and pacifist authors in university towns across Germany, each author named in a spoken "fire oath"; over the following months the new government turned the same exclusion into law through the Reich Chamber of Culture and the Editors Law.

![Diagram: a new Propaganda Ministry, then the students' Twelve Theses, blacklists and collections, the 10 May burnings with fire oaths and Goebbels's speech, then the Reich Chamber of Culture and Editors Law, then banned-book lists and the 1937 Degenerate Art campaign](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/nazi-book-burnings-1933-diagram.svg)

![Students and SA men hand down confiscated books from a collection vehicle, Berlin, 10 May 1933](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/nazi-book-burnings-1933-book-truck.jpg)

*Students and SA men with books collected for the burning, Berlin, 10 May 1933. The Federal Archive's retained caption says the confiscated books were gathered on a vehicle and driven to the Opernplatz. Photographer unknown. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0527-0001-776, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.*

## What happened

**Before the fires**

- **30 January 1933.** Adolf Hitler is appointed Reich Chancellor.
- **13 March 1933.** A decree creates the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda), with Joseph Goebbels as minister.
- **12–13 April 1933.** The Deutsche Studentenschaft, the national student body, launches its "Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist" (Action against the un-German spirit) with twelve theses, printed on posters and leaflets and reprinted in newspapers. (Sources give both dates; the Bavarian State Library's edition dates the text 12 April and says the philosopher Alfred Baeumler corrected and sharpened a first draft.) Among the theses:
- Thesis 4: "Unser gefährlichster Widersacher ist der Jude, und der, der ihm hörig ist." ("Our most dangerous adversary is the Jew, and whoever is in thrall to him.")
- Thesis 5: "Der Jude kann nur jüdisch denken. Schreibt er deutsch, dann lügt er. Der Deutsche, der deutsch schreibt, aber undeutsch denkt, ist ein Verräter!" ("The Jew can only think Jewish. If he writes German, he lies. The German who writes German but thinks un-German is a traitor!")
- Thesis 7 demands that Jewish works appear in Hebrew and, if published in German, be marked as translations.
- **April to early May.** Student groups collect books from libraries and bookshops, working from blacklists; the best-known was drawn up by the Berlin librarian Wolfgang Herrmann.
- **6 May 1933.** Students and SA men raid Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin and carry off its library; material from it is burned on the Opernplatz four days later.
- **9 May 1933.** The student association sends out the texts of the "Feuersprüche" (fire oaths) to be read at the burnings. The same day the American author Helen Keller, whose books were on the lists, publishes an open letter to German students: "History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas."

**10 May 1933**

- Students hold torchlight marches and burnings. Counts differ by what is counted: **22 university towns** on the night of 10 May (Bundestag research service); **34 university towns** in the wave that began that night (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, USHMM); **more than 80 places** over 1933 (the 2008 handbook edited by Julius H. Schoeps and Werner Treß, as summarised by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, bpb).
- **Berlin, Opernplatz** (today Bebelplatz). USHMM estimates upwards of 25,000 volumes burned across the towns. Near midnight Goebbels speaks: "Das Zeitalter eines überspitzten jüdischen Intellektualismus ist nun zu Ende" ("The era of exaggerated Jewish intellectualism is now at an end"). He tells the students they are right to commit "den Ungeist der Vergangenheit" ("the un-spirit of the past") to the flames.
- **The nine fire oaths.** Each has the form "against X, for Y", then "I consign to the flames the writings of …". Printed versions differ slightly ("der Flamme" or "dem Feuer"; "Verfall" or "Zerfall"): 1. "Gegen Klassenkampf und Materialismus, für Volksgemeinschaft und idealistische Lebenshaltung!" Marx and Kautsky. (USHMM: "Against class struggle and materialism, For national community and an idealistic way of life.") 2. "Gegen Dekadenz und moralischen Verfall! Für Zucht und Sitte in Familie und Staat!" ("Against decadence and moral decay! For discipline and decency in family and state!") Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, Erich Kästner (who watched from the crowd). 3. "Gegen Gesinnungslumperei und politischen Verrat, für Hingabe an Volk und Staat!" ("Against moral shabbiness and political betrayal, for devotion to people and state!") Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster. 4. "Gegen seelenzerfasernde Überschätzung des Trieblebens, für den Adel der menschlichen Seele!" (USHMM: "Against soul-shredding overvaluation of base human instincts, For the nobility of the human soul.") Sigmund Freud. 5. "Gegen Verfälschung unserer Geschichte und Herabwürdigung ihrer großen Gestalten, für Ehrfurcht vor unserer Vergangenheit!" ("Against falsification of our history and disparagement of its great figures, for reverence for our past!") Emil Ludwig, Werner Hegemann. 6. "Gegen volksfremden Journalismus demokratisch-jüdischer Prägung, für verantwortungsbewusste Mitarbeit am Werk des nationalen Aufbaus!" (USHMM: "Against journalism that is alien to the nation because of its democratic-Jewish character, For responsible collaboration on the work of national construction.") Theodor Wolff, Georg Bernhard. 7. "Gegen literarischen Verrat am Soldaten des Weltkriegs, für Erziehung des Volkes im Geist der Wehrhaftigkeit!" ("Against literary betrayal of the soldiers of the World War, for educating the people in the spirit of military preparedness!") Erich Maria Remarque. 8. "Gegen dünkelhafte Verhunzung der deutschen Sprache, für Pflege des kostbarsten Gutes unseres Volkes!" ("Against conceited mangling of the German language, for care of our people's most precious possession!") Alfred Kerr. 9. "Gegen Frechheit und Anmaßung, für Achtung und Ehrfurcht vor dem unsterblichen deutschen Volksgeist!" ("Against impudence and presumption, for respect and reverence for the immortal German national spirit!") Kurt Tucholsky, Carl von Ossietzky.

Translations not marked USHMM are FRAME's.

![Students and SA men holding books and papers at the burning site on the Opernplatz, Berlin, 10 May 1933](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/nazi-book-burnings-1933-opernplatz-students.jpg)

*Students and SA men with books and papers at the burning site, Opernplatz, Berlin, 10 May 1933 (the archive's retained caption calls them "undeutsche Bücher und Schriften"). Photographer unknown. Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14598, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.*

**From bonfire to statute**

- **12 May 1933.** Oskar Maria Graf, whose books were on a recommended list, publishes "Verbrennt mich!" ("Burn me!") in Vienna's *Arbeiter-Zeitung*. His works are then banned.
- **22 September 1933.** The Reich Chamber of Culture Law (Reichskulturkammergesetz) sets up a chamber system under Goebbels's ministry, including a Reich Literature Chamber (Reichsschrifttumskammer) for writers, publishers and booksellers. Its first implementing decree (1 November 1933), § 10, allows admission to be refused, or a member expelled, where facts show the person lacks "die für die Ausübung ihrer Tätigkeit erforderliche Zuverlässigkeit und Eignung" ("the reliability and suitability required to practise their profession").
- **4 October 1933.** The Editors Law (Schriftleitergesetz), in force from 1 January 1934, makes newspaper editing a licensed public office. § 5 requires editors to be of "arischer Abstammung" (Aryan descent) and not married to a person of non-Aryan descent. § 14 obliges editors to keep out of their papers anything "geeignet …, die Kraft des Deutschen Reiches nach außen oder im Innern, den Gemeinschaftswillen des deutschen Volkes, die deutsche Wehrhaftigkeit, Kultur oder Wirtschaft zu schwächen" ("liable to weaken the strength of the German Reich abroad or at home, the common will of the German people, German military preparedness, culture or economy").
- **1935 to 1941.** The Reich Literature Chamber issues a confidential "Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums" (List of harmful and undesirable literature): a first list as of October 1935, then a consolidated list "Stand vom 31. Dezember 1938" with annual supplements to 1941.
- **Related case, 1937.** The exhibition "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) opens in Munich on 19 July 1937 with about 650 works. About 20,000 works were confiscated from public museums in the campaign (Free University of Berlin research database); a law of 31 May 1938 made the confiscations final without compensation. "Entartet" (degenerate) did for art what "undeutsch" did for books.

## How it works

Censorship is not itself a technique id in FRAME's taxonomy; the tags below describe the messaging that announced, justified and accompanied the suppression.

- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): "undeutsch" (un-German) is a verdict on a book's belonging, not a description of its content. Each oath attaches a stigma label to a named author: "decadence and moral decay" (oath 2), "political betrayal" (3), "literary betrayal of the soldiers" (7), "conceited mangling of the German language" (8), "impudence and presumption" (9). No passage from any book is cited; the label stands in for a review. "Entartet" works the same way for paintings.
- [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/): the theses and the speech place blame for the nation's cultural condition on a bounded out-group. Thesis 4 names "the Jew" as the "most dangerous adversary"; thesis 5 says a Jew who writes German "lies"; oath 6 ties "alien" journalism to a "democratic-Jewish" character; Goebbels announces the end of "Jewish intellectualism". Non-Jewish authors (Kästner, Remarque, Foerster) are folded in through thesis 5's "German who … thinks un-German", so one villain class covers many different writers and arguments.
- [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/): the "for" half of every oath is a virtue phrase with no testable content: "national community and an idealistic way of life", "discipline and decency", "the nobility of the human soul", "reverence for our past", "the immortal German national spirit". Each is offered as what burning the named author achieves; none says what would count as success.

The laws that followed are recorded as the structure the slogans fed into, not tagged: "reliability and suitability" and "weaken … the common will" are open legal standards, while the racial requirement in § 5 of the Editors Law is explicit.

## Then and now

![Ein Volk, ein Führer, ein Ja (One People, One Leader, One Yes)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/ein-volk-ein-fuehrer-ein-ja-1933.jpg)

*[Ein Volk, ein Führer, ein Ja (One People, One Leader, One Yes)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/ein-volk-ein-fuehrer-ein-ja-1933/), NSDAP banner on Voßstraße, Berlin, for the 12 November 1933 election and referendum. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-K0930-502, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.*

The banner went up six months after the burnings and five weeks after the Editors Law. Both work on the same unit, the *Volk*, from opposite ends: the oaths define who is outside it ("volksfremd", "undeutsch") and remove their books; the banner defines who is inside it, one people with one leader and one permitted answer. The gallery tags the banner [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/); the burnings are tagged for labels and blame. The differences: the banner is a party poster for a vote in which only NSDAP candidates stood; the burnings destroyed books named by author; the autumn 1933 laws were binding statutes with exclusion from the profession as the penalty.

![Memorial plaque on Bebelplatz, Berlin, quoting Heine's Almansor](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/nazi-book-burnings-1933-bebelplatz-plaque.png)

*Plaque of Micha Ullman's memorial "Bibliothek" (built 1994–95) on Bebelplatz, the former Opernplatz. Photo by Andreas Thum, 2007, CC BY-SA 3.0.*

**The Heine line.** Heinrich Heine's tragedy *Almansor* was written in 1820–21 and published in 1823. The published text reads: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher / Verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." ("That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end burn people too.") The Bebelplatz plaque gives a slightly different word order, "verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen", and dates it "1820". In the play Hassan, a Muslim character, says it after Almansor reports that Cardinal Ximenes (Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros) threw the Qur'an onto a pyre in Granada after the Christian conquest, a reference to the burning of Arabic books Cisneros ordered in 1499. The line is about Spain and is quoted today for its later application.

## Positions on the record

- **The organisers' and the government's stated rationale.** The students acted, in their words, "against the un-German spirit" and for the purity of German language and literature (theses 5 and 7). Each oath states its purpose in its "for" clause. Goebbels presented the night as the end of "Jewish intellectualism". USHMM describes the burnings as a student initiative that the government supported but did not organise. The chamber and editors laws present exclusion as a matter of professional "reliability" and of protecting the Reich's strength and the "common will".
- **Critics at the time.** Helen Keller's open letter (9 May 1933) said ideas cannot be killed. Oskar Maria Graf's "Verbrennt mich!" (12 May 1933) rejected being claimed by the new government. Several of the named authors were already abroad or left Germany; Kästner stayed; Ossietzky was held in concentration camps from 1933 and was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize in 1936.
- **This archive's reading.** Documented: the theses, the oath texts (with minor variants), Goebbels's speech, the laws and dates, the lists, and the Degenerate Art exhibition and confiscations. The number of towns depends on the count used (22, 34, or more than 80). The national total of books burned is not established; 25,000 is USHMM's estimate. The Bebelplatz plaque's wording differs slightly from the published play.

## Same-method test

The method scored is the messaging: labelling authors as un-national and treacherous, blaming a named out-group, and pairing each act with virtue words. The finding would be the same for any government or movement. Other removals and burnings show where the parallels hold and stop:

- **United States, 1953.** Under pressure from Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose aides Roy Cohn and G. David Schine toured U.S. Information Service libraries in Europe in April 1953, the State Department's International Information Administration issued directives against material by Communists and "fellow travelers", and books were pulled from overseas library shelves. In June 1953 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles acknowledged that some removed books had been burned; later accounts give the number as eleven. On 14 June 1953 President Eisenhower told Dartmouth graduates, "Don't join the book burners." **Differences:** confined to government libraries abroad, not domestic publishing or bookshops; the burnings were few and not staged as ritual; the President publicly criticised book burning at the time; the authors kept publishing in the United States. **Shared:** a political label ("fellow traveler") as the criterion for removal.
- **Soviet Union, from 1922.** Glavlit's prior censorship, closed collections and replacement encyclopedia pages ([Glavlit and the retouched photographic record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/soviet-glavlit-photo-retouching/)). **Differences:** a permanent bureaucracy that withdrew material quietly over decades, not a public ceremony; the stated criteria were political, not explicitly racial.
- **China, 1966.** During the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign at the start of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards searched homes and destroyed books, art and religious objects (MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, *Mao's Last Revolution*, 2006). **Differences:** dispersed destruction by mobilised youth over a larger country and longer period; the labels were class labels ("old ideas, old culture"), not racial ones. (For an older published banned list, see [The Index of Prohibited Books (1559-1966)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/index-librorum-prohibitorum/).)

None of these is equivalent to 1933. What marks 1933 is the combination of a public ritual naming each author, an explicitly racial criterion written into the theses and then into § 5 of the Editors Law, and compulsory licensing of writers, publishers, booksellers and editors within months.

## How to spot it

- Look for a category word that decides membership rather than describing content ("un-German", "degenerate", "alien to the people"). Ask whether any passage from the work is quoted.
- Check whether blame for a broad condition (decline, decadence, defeat) is assigned to one bounded group, and whether people outside that group are folded in as its servants.
- When an act of removal is paired with a virtue phrase, ask what the virtue phrase would look like as a measurable outcome.
- Follow the path from slogan to statute: a campaign's labels often reappear as open legal standards ("reliability", "weakening the common will") that decide who may work.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from this page's sourced facts (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| Students and SA men at the Opernplatz burning site, 10 May 1933 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-14598,_Berlin,_Opernplatz,_B%C3%BCcherverbrennung.jpg), Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14598 | CC BY-SA 3.0 DE |
| Books collected on a vehicle for the burning, Berlin, 10 May 1933 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-B0527-0001-776,_Berlin,_B%C3%BCcherverbrennung.jpg), Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-B0527-0001-776 | CC BY-SA 3.0 DE |
| Heine plaque, Bebelplatz (2007) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gedenktafel_auf_dem_Bebelplatz_in_Berlin.png), Andreas Thum | CC BY-SA 3.0 (1280px rendering, unmodified) |
| *Ein Volk, ein Führer, ein Ja* (1933) | FRAME gallery | CC BY-SA 3.0 DE (Bundesarchiv) |

### Image gaps

- **Bundesarchiv Bild 102-14597 (Georg Pahl, Opernplatz, 1933).** CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, but Wikimedia Commons marks it with a restriction template (Nazi symbols), and this archive's image rule rejects any file carrying a restriction flag.
- **Keystone View photo of SA men and students with a truck of books at the Opernplatz (Polish National Digital Archives copy).** Not included: Commons lists it as CC BY-SA 4.0, but it is an agency press photo and its U.S. copyright status is unclear.
- **The printed Twelve Theses poster and the fire-oath circular.** Not included: no openly licensed scan with a clear U.S. status was found.
- **The "Entartete Kunst" exhibition, 1937-1938.** A Bundesarchiv photograph of Goebbels at the touring exhibition (Bild 183-H02648, 27 February 1938) is CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, but the paintings on the walls in the frame are works by other artists whose own copyright was not checked, so it is not hosted here. Installation views of the Munich rooms were not checked in full.
- **Higher-resolution copies.** The three Bundesarchiv photos are hosted on Commons at about 800px wide only.
- **Pages of the 1938 "Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums".** The Bonn digitisation could not be reached from the build environment, and its reuse terms were not checked.

## Sources

- Deutsche Studentenschaft, "Wider den undeutschen Geist!" (twelve theses), April 1933. Edition and introduction: Bavarian State Library, *100(0) Schlüsseldokumente zur deutschen Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert*, "Zwölf Thesen Wider den undeutschen Geist, 12. April 1933" ([1000dokumente.de](https://www.1000dokumente.de/index.html?c=dokument_de&dokument=0207_gei&object=translation&l=de)); text also at [Wikisource](https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Wider_den_undeutschen_Geist!).
- U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia: ["Nazi Book Burnings"](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning); ["The Book Burning 'Fire Oaths,' May 1933"](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/fire-oaths); ["Books burn as Goebbels speaks"](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/books-burn-as-goebbels-speaks).
- Deutscher Bundestag, Wissenschaftliche Dienste, *Aktueller Begriff* Nr. 12/08, "10. Mai 1933 – Bücherverbrennung", 7 April 2008 ([PDF](https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/499294/4540d7fb09f364119746ecb188a78ede/10-Mai-1933-Buecherverbrennung.pdf)).
- Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, *Deutschland Archiv*, ["Bücherverbrennungen am 10. Mai 1933: Nicht nur in Berlin"](https://www.bpb.de/themen/deutschlandarchiv/520949/buecherverbrennungen-am-10-mai-1933-nicht-nur-in-berlin/).
- Julius H. Schoeps and Werner Treß (eds.), *Orte der Bücherverbrennungen in Deutschland 1933*, Hildesheim: Olms, 2008.
- Erlass über die Errichtung des Reichsministeriums für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, 13 March 1933.
- Reichskulturkammergesetz, 22 September 1933, and Erste Verordnung zur Durchführung des Reichskulturkammergesetzes, 1 November 1933 ([text at verfassungen.de](https://www.verfassungen.de/de33-45/kulturkammer33-v1.htm)).
- Schriftleitergesetz, 4 October 1933; bpb, ["NS-Schriftleitergesetz: Journalisten als Staatsdiener"](https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/hintergrund-aktuell/283118/ns-schriftleitergesetz-journalisten-als-staatsdiener/).
- Reichsschrifttumskammer, *Liste des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums, Stand vom 31. Dezember 1938 und Jahreslisten 1939–1941* ([HathiTrust catalog record](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002201939); [ULB Bonn digitisation](https://digitale-sammlungen.ulb.uni-bonn.de/periodical/structure/7601450)).
- Freie Universität Berlin, Forschungsstelle "Entartete Kunst", [database history: confiscation](https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/db_entart_kunst/geschichte/beschlagnahme/index.html); Gesetz über Einziehung von Erzeugnissen entarteter Kunst, 31 May 1938.
- Heinrich Heine, *Almansor. Eine Tragödie* (1823), [Wikisource](https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Almansor_(Heine)).
- Helen Keller, open letter to German students, 9 May 1933 ([American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Archive](https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK02-B210-F03-001)).
- Oskar Maria Graf, "Verbrennt mich!", *Arbeiter-Zeitung* (Vienna), 12 May 1933; [Literaturportal Bayern](https://www.literaturportal-bayern.de/themen?task=lpbtheme.default&id=649).
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, commencement address, Dartmouth College, 14 June 1953 ([Library of Congress item](https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.0980090c/)); *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954*, vol. II, part 2, documents on the overseas libraries ("Bookburning" file, Dulles papers) ([FRUS](https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v02p2/d337)).
- "Commentary: The US government once burned books it didn't like", *Central Maine* (syndicated), 5 October 2023 ([link](https://www.centralmaine.com/2023/10/05/commentary-the-us-government-once-burned-books-it-didnt-like/)), for the figure of eleven burned books.
- Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, *Mao's Last Revolution*, Harvard University Press, 2006.