Rain and Fire

Friday afternoon, 14th of April 2006, a quarter century after my birth. Cloudcover masks the sky as Monika and I beat our way through the wind and rain across the Bebelplatz in Berlin. The Humboldt University, St Hedwigs Cathedral and the German State Opera flank the paved square.

I steal a glance through a narrow gap between the umbrella, which is wedged at a horizontal into the wind, and the rainsoaked pavings. A small plastic window comes into my acute view- the only landmark in this open area.

"This is where the Nazi's burned the books in '33", Monika tells me. May 10, 1933; Nazi youth groups burned around 20,000 books from the Humboldt University and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft; including works by Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx and H.G. Wells.

The rain sinks deeper into my coat. I'm lost in a vision of a dark night, of rain and fire, black smoke and echoing anthems.

I peel back the black and return to the grey, now staring through the plastic window into an almost featureless chamber below- a underground chamber cloaked in an off white, featureless except it is lined with massive bookshelves. Rows and rows of empty bookshelves. They are not graves, they are not remains, they are not even nothing- they are lost.


Another couple battle across the square and look into the chamber below. "It's beautiful" says the American woman. I don't know if she doesn't get it or even if it could be beautiful. I feel revulsion. I want to get away and think about how it could happen- how a civilisation can destroy its essential treasure, its value, it's offering to the future. I want to think about why this touches me more than murder.

"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen", "Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings." Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1821.