Various Small Fires

In the course of Neil MacGregor's recent series on Germany, there were several references to the Nazi book burnings of 1933.  Given what was to happen subsequently, this may seem relatively low on the scale of Nazi-era atrocities, but, as Heinrich Heine, a German Jew, wrote in 1820: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" (wherever they burn books, they will also in the end burn people).  Naturally, Heine's works were amongst those tossed onto the bonfires; the list of authors condemned as "un-German" is a very distinguished one indeed.

However, I'm not about to give a history lecture, or a literary analysis -- these grotesque events are well-known, and there are plenty of places you can read about them, if you're curious.  What interests and troubles me is the parallel with today.  I find myself wondering: if a government came to power that wished to control the curriculum in a centralised, ideological way (imagine that!), and enacted a law to destroy all books that were even vaguely off-message, how far would we comply, those of us whose professional duty it is to defend culture and ensure its transmission to future generations? I'm thinking primarily of librarians, archivists, academics and teachers; how far would any of us resist?  What price would we be prepared to pay, what personal risks would we be prepared to undergo?

It's a question that goes to the heart of any understanding of that perennial conundrum:  how could the Germans have allowed the events subsequent to 1933 to happen?  My suspicion is that very few of us living in luckier countries who need not carry that historic guilt would have behaved any better then, or will do so in the future, if challenged to do so.  I say this, because I have seen the evidence.  I have watched senior managers comply with distasteful directives, that went contrary to their professional ethics or personal beliefs, because it was the responsible thing to do.  Yes, people will lose their jobs, resources will be slashed to unsustainable levels, client groups will suffer...  All very regrettable, it's true, but necessary (it says here).  It's the law.  Anyway, the alternative would be career suicide.

Increasingly, over the last forty years as I have stood on picket lines or helped carry a union banner on demonstrations, I have been dismayed by the steady decline in support from the very people whose presence would count for something in the eyes of those whose attention needed to be got.  For example, senior academic staff who stay away from campus on a strike day, yet claim to have been working from home, and thus lose no pay, or influential administrative staff who hide behind claims of higher loyalties to the service.  The nadir came for me when a woman who had been a stalwart of our union, and with whom I had sat for the best part of a decade on our local executive -- she had been both secretary and president -- breezily walked past our picket line on a day of action on the way to her office.  Now a very senior administrator, she simply had too much work to do, it seemed, to be mucking about with strikes over pay.  I was dumbstruck, which was probably just as well.

It occurred to me at that same moment, very forcefully and, almost with the power of a revelation, that we were probably wasting our time, and engaged in an activity whose practical and even symbolic utility was absolutely nil; just a handful of the "usual suspects" gratifying an urge to be seen to do something, and eminently ignorable.

Inevitably, one thinks of the famous, if possibly apocryphal words of pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

Of course, next time it won't be books and bonfires.  But, whatever it is, it'll be happening to people next, unless...  Well, unless we all resolve that it shouldn't be happening, and are prepared to take the consequences.  One day, I'm going to research the careers and fates of senior German university librarians in the years following 1933.  I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised, but am not counting on it.