Book Burning - Kästner and the Nazis
KÄSTNER SEES HIS BOOKS BURNED > Page 1 | 2 | 3
Born in Dresden in 1899, Erich Kästner attended school there from 1906 until 1917. That year he began military service and after 1918 completed secondary school at Dresden's König Georg-Gymnasium. He began his university studies in Leipzig (German, history, philosophy, history of the theater) and had already begun publishing some newspaper pieces by 1920. In 1922 he began working at the Neue Leipziger Zeitung (newspaper). By 1927 Kästner was a theater critic in Berlin, where he lived and worked until after World War II.
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Kästner's first big writing breakthrough came with the publication of Emil und die Detektive in 1928. This children's adventure tale, set in Berlin, has been a timeless, perennial favorite—filmed over the years no less than five times in various productions in English and German. (See our German Movie Guide for the 2001 version.) Part of its appeal comes from Kästner's tendency to give the children in his stories strong character and virtues. Although this may at times create a certain lack of realism, Kästner always treats his child characters like adults, even as they remain childlike.
Although Kästner gave several reasons and even wrote an essay on the subject, no one is really sure why he remained in Germany following the Nazi rise to power. Naturally, he was criticized for this, in particular for his work at UFA on the Nazi-sponsored "Münchhausen" film. (He probably accepted that job because his income was severely limited by Nazi restrictions, but the circumstances have never been entirely clear.) Nevertheless, no one would claim that Kästner had any Nazi sympathies. On May 10, 1933 the author had the unique experience of watching his own books burned by the Nazis in Berlin. All of the other authors whose books went up in flames that night had already left Germany far behind. (See a photo of the plaque that marks the book-burning location in Berlin.) Later Kästner would be twice arrested and held by the Gestapo (in 1934 and 1937). It is uncertain whether he had any Jewish background or not.
In any event, under the Third Reich Kästner was forced to publish outside of Germany—until he was later restricted from publishing anywhere at all. During this period several of his works appeared under Switzerland's Atrium-Verlag imprint. These included his poems in "Doktor Erich Kästners lyrische Hausapotheke" (1936), several children's books and three novels: Drei Männer im Schnee (1934), Die verschwundene Miniatur (1935), and Georg und die Zwischenfälle (1938), later entitled Der kleine Grenzverkehr.
His output after the war rarely matched the force of his earlier work, and although he did publish some works that reflected his wartime experiences—"Die Schule der Diktatoren" (1956) and the journal "Notabene 45" (1961) among them, he never did publish the "big novel" that he had promised as part of his justification for remaining in Nazi Germany. But all was not well with the author. In the early 1960s he spent time in a Swiss sanatorium, although he continued to write and serve as the honorary president of the German authors group known as PEN.
He also wrote a few humorous anthologies and essays during the 1960s, but Kästner published only one book during that decade. Around 1966, following a series of readings of his works in Germany and in other European countries, Kästner withdrew almost entirely from any literary activity. His last book, written for children, was Der kleine Mann und die kleine Miss, published in 1967.
Kästner died at the age of 75 in his adopted city of Munich on July 29, 1974.
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