News from the German Literary Scene

The exhibition on show in the exhibition pavilion opposite the Holocaust Memorial in the centre of Berlin is devoted to authors who were ostracized, suppressed, expelled and murdered by the Nazis. Organized by the Association for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, it remembers the works and lives of writers who the regime wanted to force into oblivion by publicly burning their books in May 1933.

The exhibition is divided into three sections: in the first, visitors can trace the history of the book burning by reading biographies of the authors on nine steles. The main section of the exhibition is devoted to the fates of the ostracized authors, using photographs, biographies and audio documents to remember Heinrich Mann, Alfred Döblin, Kurt Tucholsky and Alexander Moritz Frey. At the same time, however, the exhibition features authors whose works genuinely were destroyed forever by the book burning. The third part of the exhibition shows which works have remained part of our cultural canon to the present day, despite the burning of the books and banishment or murder of their authors. Furthermore, a “library of burnt books” will be set up.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of readings. Once a month, household names such as Iris Berben, Herta Müller and Daniel Kehlmann will read from the works of the ostracized authors.