delit1-9, Exercise 1: The effect of 1933

Model answer (check the details):

Book burnings: on 10 May 1933 students and Nazi organisations burned books by Jewish, left-wing and other writers in Berlin and other university towns. It signalled that the new state would control culture.

Exile: thousands of writers left, among them Thomas Mann, Brecht, Stefan Zweig and many others. Exile publishers and journals abroad kept German-language writing going, and exile experience became a subject of its own.

Writers who stayed: some remained and published under censorship, some were silenced or imprisoned, some supported the regime, and some withdrew into private writing. After 1945 a debate about "inner emigration" asked whether those who stayed could claim integrity. Judgments differ person by person.

Result: German literature was divided into home and exile, and a large number of Jewish writers were persecuted or killed. The effects lasted well beyond 1945.