Review: Hitler’s Private Library – Timothy W Ryback

Tom — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:12:18 +0000

I am always interested in the way reading affects people, and also in the psychology of the German people in the build-up to the Second World War. Timothy Ryback has studied the remnants of Hitler’s private library, some 1200 books, which occupy shelf-space in the rare book division of the Library of Congress in Washington. In his new book, Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, Ryback describes the original collection of 16,000 books, and how as the sub-title suggests, they “shaped his life”.

I am used to hearing how books educate, inform and enlighten and it was a surprise to read that the wholly unenlightened Adolf Hitler was “possessed by a voracious appetite for reading”. From his earliest years after returning from the First World War battle-front in France, Hitler scoured the book-stalls of Munich to fill two book cases in his rented rooms. He read “intently, even fiercely”, usually late into the night, and Ryback records an occasion when Eva Braun interrupted a reading session and was “dispatched with a tirade that sent her hurtling red-faced down the hallway”.

Associates recalled, “I can never remember Adolf without books”, and “books were his world”, with reading being a “deadly serious business”.

A list exists of Hitler’s borrowings from a right-wing lending library in Munich and shows that between 1919 and 1921, he borrowed over a hundred entries ranging from early church history to first-hand accounts of the Russian revolution. The list includes an large number anti-Semitic texts such as “The International Jew – The Worlds Foremost Problem”, “Luther and the Jews” and many others.

Timothy Ryback explains that Hitler was never open to alternative views of life. Hitler had a “theory of reading” which precluded this, comparing the process of reading to “collecting stones to fill a mosaic of preconceived notions”. He studied books to support his ideas and to provide further evidence for the conclusions he had already drawn. I am so used to thinking of reading as enlightenment that Hitler’s approach is somehow shocking: it is almost an “anti-reading”, the object of which is to slam the doors on new thoughts rather than to seek the widening of perspectives which “real” reading brings.

It is almost terrifying to read of the books Hitler collected. Every theme of those years was covered in great depth, whether eugenics, anti-Semitism, military strategy, Germanic myths, occultism. The library abounded with title such as “Teachings on Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene”, “Terminating Reproductive Capacity for Racial-Hygiene and Social Reasons”, and “The Racial Typology of the German People”. Clearly Hitler found a considerable amount of pseudo-scientific support for his theories.

Ryback found that many of the books in the Library of Congress collection had pencilled annotations with under-linings and double margin scores. Some books fell open at favourite passages and have signs of frequent of sustained study. The book “Racial Typology of the German People” shows signs of “frequent or sustained study” and “opens effortlessly to reveal worn pages and a ragged tear along the inside cover where the spine has begun to come apart”.

Many of Hitler’s books were gifts, presented with adulatory messages inscribed on the title page: “in loyalty and reverence”, “to our beloved Fuhrer in celebration”, “my Fuhrer in gratitude and loyalty”, and the combination of these messages with Hitler’s hideous ex libris plate is genuinely chilling. We read of the publisher J F Lehamnn Verlag who’s fifty-odd titles provided “the building blocks of Nazism”, some of which seem to have been specifically published as educational primers for Hitler himself. A book containing harrowing illustrations on sterilisation are inscribed to Hitler “in great friendship”.

Among this horrific collection of volumes, we occasionally catch glimpses of Hitler’s lighter reading – Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Don Quixote as well as most of the adventure stories of Karl May, whose adventure stories of the American West were a life-long favourite.

A fascinating Afterword describes what happened to Hitler’s library after 1945, ending with an indication that inheritors of books containing the Hitler Ex Libris plate (some of which were taken as souvenirs after the war) have found them to be a malign influence who’s effect can only be expunged by donating them to a library.

In finishing this review I will quote Alberto Manguel who in his book, The Library At Night, writes of Hitler’s library,

not all our libraries come from dreams; some belong to the realm of nightmares. Among the volumes kept in the Library of Congress are a French vegetarian cookbook inscribed by its author “to Monsieur Hitler”, and a 1932 treatise on chemical warfare explaining the uses of prussic acid, later commercialised as ZyKlon B. Let there be libraries that the imagination condemns simply because of the reputation of their reader.

Review: The Library At Night – Alberto Manguel

Tom — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:45:20 +0000

I always enjoy “books about books”, or books about the pleasure of reading, and remember Manguel’s A History of Reading as one of the greatest literary pleasure. Now he had presented us with what is effectively a history of libraries in The Library At Night and the effect is equally as satisfying.

Perhaps “history” is not quite the right word, for in his 15 chapters, Manguel writes of not only the history of libraries, but also the impact and meaning of libraries through the centuries.

Everything is covered here, from the history of the great library of Alexandria to the development of the most modern libraries such as the British Library or the library of the Free University of Berlin. The book considers location, cataloguing systems, themes, and great librarians (Gottfreid Leibnitz of Hanover, Andrew Carnegie who created over 2500 libraries, Aby Warburg of Hamburg and many others). But the book is far more than history, containing many digressions on the nature of literature itself, and the process of reading.

At times the book has an almost magical or mystical feel to it. Manguel has created a library of his own in the Loire Valley, and indeed the title of the book, The Library at Night is derived from his feeling that,

. . .at night the atmosphere changes. Sounds become muffled, thoughts become louder . . . time seems closer to that moment halfway between wakefulness and sleep . . . the books become the real presence and it is I, their reader, who, through cabbalistic rituals of half-glimpsed letters, am summoned up and lured to a certain volume and a certain page.

It is these almost whimsical passages which give the book its charm, for after all, libraries are not merely collections of physical objects, but have atmosphere, cultures, accumulated historical usages which have almost sunk deep into the walls and shelves creating an experience unique to each one.

In the chapter “The Library as Shadow”, Manguel covers book-burning and the destruction of libraries. Many times through history, libraries have been destroyed, or at very least whole categories of books have been sent for destruction. Caliph Omar, who issued the order to destroy the Library of Alexandria, had a typical attitude of the fundamentalist,

If the content of these books agree with the Holy Book, then they are redundant. If they disagree, then they are undesirable. In either case they should be consigned to the flames.

I did not realise that Europeans Catholic leaders destroyed the great libraries of Mexico and Central America, eliminating the histories of the Mayan and Aztec civilisations so that they are forever lost to us. Similarly, in the 16th century, the Ottomans destroyed the Great Corvina Library, said to be one of the jewels of the Hungarian crown. Manguel raises the issue of the American Patriot Law which allows federal agents to obtain records of books borrowed from public libraries, which has caused some libraries to reconsider their acquistion policies. Libraries can be subversive and dangerous to a wide range of governments.

I enjoyed this book greatly. It is beautifully produced by Yale University Press and is richly illustrated with photographs and other drawings. I cannot think how a book on libraries could be more comprehensive, and yet totally readable, and I would recommend it to any lover of books and respecter of the concept of libraries, whether private or public.

A Common Reader » libraries

Review: Hitler’s Private Library – Timothy W Ryback

Review: The Library At Night – Alberto Manguel