Quote of the day—Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

[Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.]

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine
Almansor: A Tragedy (1823)
As translated in True Religion (2003) by Graham Ward, p. 142
[Note that he wrote this nearly 100 years before USSR was created and 110 years before Nazi Germany began burning books and shortly thereafter people.

There is a sound reason why the progression from burning books to burning people occurs. The reason for the book burning is to stop the spread of “dangerous” ideas. When the book burning fail the desired goal then the spread of those ideas “must” be stopped by the “burning” of the people who spread the ideas.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa have taken the first step. Respond appropriately.—Joe]

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9 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

  1. He did write this 250 years after the Spanish Inquisition busily burned “heretics” in Holland (and I assume elsewhere), at a time when the Church maintained its “Index” of prohibited books — meaning prohibited ideas.
    The same sort of idea is alive and well in other places; banning ideas is a mainstream notion in Islam, nor is it the only religion to do this.

  2. And toss in hate speech to the prohibited list. That one will get you canceled and/or charged today. Tomorrow …

    • I thought the famous book burning included the burning of books about “Jewish Science”, and certain modern novels, like Buddenbrooks and the Magic Mountain.
      Then there was the famous traveling art show, “Entartete Kunst”, “Degenerate Art.” Nothing I would want over my sofa, but that was a completely different school of art, in some ways typified by Goering’s Karinhall.

  3. And Heinrich Heine was twenty-six when he wrote that.

    Today, cancellation, Tomorrow, incarceration.

    Heinrich Heine was also the author of a VERY popular poem in German, “Die Lorelei”, He was also Jewish. During the Twelve-Year Reich, it was still printed, but attributed to “Author Unknown.”
    We talk now about cancellation culture and erasures from history. The attempted erasure of Heine was an example from the recent past, and at the time the German people knew they were participating in erasing him from history.

  4. And it’s more than worrisome that once Kamala the enforcer get her hands on those pictures of justice Robert performing cunnilingus on a farm animal. Necklacing may no longer be considered cruel and unusual punishment?
    It’s also a known quantity that protecting our young from the evil of an over active imagination until such a time of maturity is reached. Is an imperative.
    So, how many times have you read some book and said, wow, We should roast the ass that wrote this on a pile of his own books?
    My hypocrisy knows no bounds.

  5. I really have no illusions that we are not headed for this. I really don’t see how the American tradition of Compromise can get us out of this. We have compromised as much as tolerable to the center.

    The next steps will be ugly.

  6. Pingback: Quote of the day—William Taylor @BillT | The View From North Central Idaho

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