The Empty Library

Micha Ullman

"That was but a prelude;

where they burn books,

they will ultimately burn people as well".

INTRODUCTION

The Empty Library (1995), also known as Bibliothek or simply Library, is a public
memorial by Israeli sculptor Micha Ullman dedicated to the remembrance of the Nazi
book burnings that took place in the Bebelplatz in Berlin, Germany on May 10, 1933.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

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. 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.

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On the night of May 10, 20,000 books were destroyed by fire. Indeed, members of the
government and many young students deliberately threw "non-German" books from
bookstores and libraries into the chain. Among them, some works were written by Karl
Marx, Sigmund Freud or Stefan Zweig - to name only the most famous authors
concerned. Pages and pages went up in smoke in the dark night, no longer blackened
with ink but with ashes.

THE BURNING MEMORIAL

If you visit Bebelplatz today you will find on the ground a glass plate less than one meter
square: it is the Versunkene Bibliothek, the Empty Library. This installation by the Israeli
sculptor Micha Ullman sits as a permanent reminder of the 1933 autodafé and the
censorship that Hitler's government engendered. Revealing a sinister and icy universe,
the transparent glass plate lets us glimpse at a succession of shelves. These were
intended to accommodate the 20,000 lost works and are thus emptied of their content.
Furthermore, the library is particularly visible at night, during this time it seems to take
on its full meaning.

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