Rathausausstellung 2026 - Tafel 16: »Volksbildung« im Sinne des Nationalsozialismus | Town-hall Exhibition 2026 - Panel 16: ‘The education of the public’ as conceived by National Socialism

Case in point: Hamburg’s public libraries Under the Nazi regime, public libraries were to serve as institutions of ideological education for the Volksgemeinschaft, or national community. Wilhelm Schuster, the German-nationalist director of the Hamburg public libraries, had already begun stocking the shelves with right-wing literature before 1933. He advocated excluding the poor and the uneducated from the libraries. Once the Nazi Party came to power, he ordered the removal of all books that did not conform to Nazi ideology. At the book burning in Hamburg-Bergedorf on 24 June 1933, several hundred of the books burned came from the local public library. The ideological education remit became even more radical as the war progressed. Literature was to strengthen the population’s resolve to endure and prevail – and to justify the Nazi occupation, especially of the eastern European countries.