On 19 and 20 January 2024, we went on an excursion to Munich to explore the topic 'Literature under the conditions of censorship and dictatorship' - a topic that is especially significant in our time, in which a strengthening of illiberal tendencies can be observed and in which books are increasingly being banned, prohibited and burned again in more than a few countries and authors are being ostracised and persecuted for political, moral or religious reasons.
A guided tour of the Nazi Documentation Centre gave us an impressive insight into the rise of National Socialism in the context of the virulent national-anti-Semitic ferment in Bavaria in the 1920s and gave us an insight into the mobilisation and organisational practices and the importance of book and media propaganda, as practised by the National Socialists, for example through the expansion of the party's own Eher publishing house. The fact that surveillance and control of the literary world, the influence on reading through censorship and book bans are by no means limited to the past, but are practised worldwide - for example in Iran or China, but also in school libraries in the USA - was shown to us afterwards in the exhibition of the Munich Literature House "Forbidden Books" [German] in a large number of current cases, which became tangible and readable for us on the basis of the book copies on display. During a guided tour of the exhibition by curator Anna Seethaler, we also received interesting explanations about the subversive way in which literary creators deal with surveillance and censorship, as well as practical insights into the conception and organisation of the exhibition. In the evening, after we had recovered with a chat over Ochsnbackerl and Kaiserschmarrn and then had a well-earned good night's sleep, the packed programme continued the following afternoon with a visit to the Hildebrandhaus of the Monacensia, a stately artists' villa that is now part of the Munich City Library. During a guided tour, we were given an insight into the eventful history of the building and were able to get to know the other side of the city in the permanent exhibition "Munich in Thomas Mann's time", the Munich of the literary bohemians with Franziska zu Reventlow or Erich Mühsam, the centre of attraction for many artists and writers such as Erika Mann or Oskar Maria Graf, who, declared opponents of National Socialism, were driven into exile and continued their anti-fascist work from there.
With the impressions and knowledge we gained during the two days, the quote from Salman Rushdie, with which the "Forbidden Books" exhibition begins, takes on an even clearer meaning: "Freedom of expression is the freedom on which all other freedoms depend".
[Report by Dr. Tobias Christ, WG Book Science, Jan. 23, 2024]