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The Bebelplatz is known as the site of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremony held in the evening of May 10, 1933 by members of the SA (“brownshirts”), SS, Nazi students and Hitler Youth groups, on the instigation of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis under the leadership of Adolf Hitler burned around 20,000 books, including works by Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx and many other authors. Some days earlier, on May 6, the students had also dragged the contents library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft into the square, burning them on May 10. Today a memorial by Micha Ullman consisting of a glass plate set into the cobbles, giving a view of empty bookcases, commemorates the book burning. Furthermore, a line of Heinrich Heine is engraved, stating “Das war ein vorspiel nur wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen” (in English: “Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people”). Students at Humboldt University hold a book sale in the square every year to mark the anniversary.
