Empty Library

BERLIN
We are standing in front of one of the main building at Humboldt University on Unter den Linden Street.  This is the “University of Berlin” where Einstein taught in the ‘20's and 30’s when at the pinnacle of his career in Germany.  As we face the building we stand in a cobblestone square.  One of Berlin's ubiquitous construction sites is behind us.  But it is what is beneath our feet that draws our attention.  Set into the cobblestones is a sheet of thick glass about 1.5m square.  We peer down but see nothing but white.  An illuminated room?  But then, when we crane our neck we notice that at the edges of the blank are shelves.  We circle the square and now see shelves line each wall of a large (8mx8m?) room.  All is white, the shelves and the floor of the subterranean room.  The shelves are empty.

Empty Library - Opern Platz, Berlin

It was in this plaza (then called Opernplatz) that on May 10, 1933  Josef Goebbels and the Nazi ceremoniously burned 20,000 books housed in the University of Berlin library, that conflicted with Nazi ideology.  They included books by German (Herman and Thomas Mann) and foreign (HG Wells, Ernest Hemingway) writers.

This “empty library,” alone, cold, sealed under glass in the square, is chilling reminder of the times when people have destroyed books in an effort to manipulate history itself in their favor.


Peter