The Empty Library

On April 6, 1933, the Nazi German Student Association's Main Office for Press and Propaganda announced a nationwide initiative "against the un-German spirit", climaxing in a literary Säuberung, or cleansing, by fire.{{Cite journal|last=Ritchie|first=J. M.|date=July 1998|title=The Nazi Book-Burning|journal=The Modern Language Review|volume=83|issue=3|pages=636–640|doi=10.2307/3731288|issn=0026-7937|jstor=3731288}} Local chapters of the group were charged with the distribution of literary blacklists that included Jewish, Marxist, Socialist, anti-family, and anti-German literature and planned grand ceremonies for the public to gather and dispose of the objectionable material.{{Cite web|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning|title=Book Burning|last=US Holocaust Memorial Museum|website=encyclopedia.ushmm.org|language=en|access-date=2019-12-06}}

In Berlin, the German Student Union organized the celebratory book burnings that took place on May 10, 1933, on a dreary, rainy evening. 40,000 people crowded into the Opernplatz (as it was then known) as 5,000 German students proceeded past them, holding burning torches to ceremonially ignite the pile of books seized for the event.{{Cite news|title=NAZI BOOK-BURNING FAILS TO STIR BERLIN: 40,000 Watch Students Fire Volumes in a Drizzle, but Show Little Enthusiasm. SOME 'FETES' POSTPONED But 'Un-German' Literature Is Consigned to the Flames in Most University Towns. BERLIN LUKEWARM TO BOOK-BURNING|last=Birchall|first=Frederick T.|date=May 10, 1933|work=The New York Times|id = {{ProQuest|100683048}}}} Joseph Goebbels, Germany's Reich Minister of Propaganda, spoke at the event, declaring that "the era of exaggerated Jewish intellectualism is now at an end… and the future German man will not just be a man of books… this late hour [I] entrust to the flames the intellectual garbage of the past."{{Citation|last=Pearl|first=Moran|title=Books and Libraries as Witnesses of the Second World War and the Holocaust in Monuments|date=2015-09-01|work=Austrian Federalism in Comparative Perspective|pages=151–171|publisher=The University of New Orleans Press|isbn=978-1-60801-143-8|doi=10.2307/j.ctt1n2txpf.13}} Thirty-four additional book burnings took place across Germany that month.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Bebelplatz book burning in 1993, The Berlin Senat for Building and Housing invited thirty artists to participate in a memorial design competition.{{Citation|last=Arandelovic|first=Biljana|chapter=Public Art in Berlin|date=2018|pages=39–210|publisher=Springer International Publishing|isbn=978-3-319-73493-4|doi=10.1007/978-3-319-73494-1_3|title=Public Art and Urban Memorials in Berlin|series=The Urban Book Series}} Israeli installation artist Micha Ullman's subtle submission was selected as the winner.{{Cite web|url=http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/9/memory-and-counter-memory|title=Harvard Design Magazine: Memory and Counter-Memory|last=Young|first=James Edward|website=www.harvarddesignmagazine.org|access-date=2019-12-06}} Ullman, whose work frequently deals with themes of absence and memory, proposed digging a memorial into the surface of the Bebelplatz, thus creating a void.{{Cite book|title=The stages of memory : reflections on memorial art, loss, and the spaces between|last=Young, James Edward|date=2016|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=978-1-61376-493-0|location=Amherst|pages=158|oclc=963603953}} The monument was unveiled on May 20, 1995.{{Cite web|url=https://www.visitberlin.de/en/book-burning-memorial-bebelplatz|title=Book burning memorial at Bebelplatz|website=www.visitberlin.de|language=en|access-date=2019-12-07}}

File:Memorial de los libros quemados en Bebelplatz, Berlín 02.jpg

The Empty Library consists of a {{convert|530|x|706|x|706|cm}} subterranean room lined with empty white bookshelves, beneath a glass plate in the pavement of the square. The memorial exemplifies what art historian James E. Young terms as "negative form," sinking into the cobblestones of the Bebelplatz to create a void. The placement of the room underneath the cobblestones of the plaza forces viewers to crane their necks in order to look into the memorial. Approximating the volume of the 20,000 books burned on that site on May 10, 1933,{{Cite magazine|last=Bickel|first=Stefanie|date=October 2008|title=Searching for the Heavens When I Look Downward: A Conversation with Micha Ullman|url=https://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag08/oct_08/ullman/Ullman.shtml|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200112021820/http://www.sculpture.org:80/documents/scmag08/oct_08/ullman/Ullman.shtml|archive-date=12 January 2020|journal=Sculpture|volume=27|issue=8|pages=32–37}} the space inside the monument is air-conditioned to prevent condensation on the glass pane that sits level with the surface of the plaza and remains continuously lit. While The Empty Library's low profile can make it difficult to spot during the daytime, at night it illuminates the Bebelplatz with an eerie white light.

The memorial is located at the height of the backfilled western ramp of the Lindentunnel, which was demolished for the construction over a length of 25 metres.

Ullman's memorial is situated within the Bebelplatz in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany. Located in front the Former Royal Library and across the Unter den Linden from Humboldt University, the monument sits at the same location as the pyre of books burned on May 10, 1933.

File:Gedenktafel Bebelplatz (Mitte) Bebelplatz.jpg

Several years after the main structure of the memorial was built, a bronze plaque was inlaid into the cobblestones a few feet away.

Etched with an epigraph taken from the great German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine's 1820 play Almansor, it features the chilling message:

{{quote|text="Das war ein Vorspiel nur,
dort wo man Bücher verbrennt,
verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen."

("This was but a prelude;
where they burn books,
they ultimately burn people").}}

Though Heine's words are remarkably prescient within the context of the Holocaust, copies of his works, which were featured on the Nazi literary blacklists, were likely destroyed during the Berlin book burning.

The costs for the care and maintenance of the memorial (for example, the special glass pane must be replaced every three months) are covered by Wall AG.{{Cite web|url=http://www.cdumitte.de/trans_1_1_86843_Mahnmal-fuer-die-Buecherverbrennung-am-Bebelplatz--Wall-AG-verlaengert-Pflege-um-weitere-zwei-Jahre.html|title=Mahnmal für die Bücherverbrennung am Bebelplatz – Wall AG verlängert Pflege um weitere zwei Jahre|last=Mitte|first=Berlin|website=CDU Kreisverband Berlin-Mitte|language=de|access-date=2019-10-24}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/mitte/article216757047/Buecherverbrennung-Neues-Glas-fuer-Mahnmal-am-Bebelplatz.html|title=Bücherverbrennung: Neues Glas für Mahnmal am Bebelplatz|last=Latz|first=Christian|date=2019-03-27|website=www.morgenpost.de|language=de-DE|access-date=2019-10-24}}

Years after the construction of the memorial, a parking garage was built underneath the Bebelplatz. Ullman was a vocal opponent of the construction, citing worries regarding the philosophical resonance of the monument as a void changing.{{Cite news|url=https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/a-rare-look-inside-berlin-s-book-burning-memorial-1.5263329|title=Israeli Sculptor Gives Rare Tour of His Book-burning Memorial in Berlin|last=Aderet|first=Ofer|date=2014-09-07|work=Haaretz|access-date=2019-12-07|language=en}} The garage contains an access route that enables maintenance workers to clean the monument two times a year.

File:Berlin DenkmalBuecherverbrennung BookBurningMemorial Bebelplatz.jpg|View into the monument; brightly lit at night

File:Bebelplatz at night.jpg|Bebelplatz at night

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Category:1995 works

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Category:Monuments and memorials completed in the 1990s

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Category:Works about censorship