Adolf Hitler personally owned an extensive collection of books (not including books he bought for the German state library). Nazi politician Baldur von Schirach claimed that Hitler had about 6,000 volumes and that he had read each one. Tyler James Oechsner estimated the collection at 16,300 volumes. [1] No records exist to confirm the amount, as several books were destroyed by the Allies. [2]
Although contemporaries say that Hitler loved reading works by German authors, Friedrich Nietzsche in particular, according to Ambrus Miskolczy "there is no sign of Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, or Nietzsche in his library" [2] (although it is possible that some of these could have been destroyed by Allied bombing). He is said to have believed that William Shakespeare was far superior to Goethe and Schiller. He had a copy of Georg Müller 's 1925 translation of Shakespeare's collected works, and was fond of quoting certain lines throughout his life. According to Timothy Ryback, his collection is said to have included "first editions of works by philosophers, historians, poets, playwrights, and novelists." [3] He owned illustrated copies of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe , which he ranked—along with Gulliver's Travels and Uncle Tom's Cabin —as the great works of world literature. Hitler was a voracious reader; he claimed to read at least one book a night, if not more. He was also given books as gifts by the wives of his friends and colleagues. According to Miskolczy, "The only outstanding classical literary text found in his library today is the collected writings of Kleist." [2]
The first description of Hitler's private collection was published in 1942. His private books that were kept in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin were confiscated by the Soviets and sent to Moscow. Books in Munich and Berchtesgaden (as well as Hitler's Globe from Berchtesgaden) were taken as war booty by individual U.S. soldiers. Three thousand volumes were later discovered in a Berchtesgaden salt mine, and they were taken by the United States Library of Congress. The largest volume that has been recovered is about the German colonies, with a dedication written to Hitler, encouraging the "re-acquisition of the colonies". [2] They are now in a special locked room in the Library of Congress where they can be accessed five at a time and read in the rare-book reading room. [4] Eighty books that had belonged to Hitler were identified in the basement of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. [4] [5] [6]
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German polymath, whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan.
Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer.
Berchtesgaden is a municipality in the district Berchtesgadener Land, Bavaria, in southeastern Germany, near the border with Austria, 30 km (19 mi) south of Salzburg and 180 km (110 mi) southeast of Munich. It lies in the Berchtesgaden Alps. South of the town, the Berchtesgaden National Park stretches along three parallel valleys.
Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose style.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, playwright, historian, philosopher, and physician. Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright.
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who greatly influenced Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture. At the age of 30, Brandes formulated the principles of a new realism and naturalism, condemning hyper-aesthetic writing and also fantasy in literature. His literary goals were shared by some other authors, among them the Norwegian "realist" playwright Henrik Ibsen.
The Berghof was Adolf Hitler's holiday home in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany. Other than the Wolfsschanze, his headquarters in East Prussia for the invasion of the Soviet Union, he spent more time here than anywhere else during his time as the Führer of Nazi Germany. It was also one of the most widely known of his headquarters, which were located throughout Europe.
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents. In 1991, the tricentennial of its opening to the public, the Ducal Library was renamed for Duchess Anna Amalia. Today, the library is a public research library for literature and art history. The main focus is German literature from the Classical and the late Romantic eras. The library was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Classical Weimar site because of its testimony to the global cultural importance of Weimar during the late 18th and early 19th centuries during the Weimar Classicism movement.
Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served more than 30 years as a professor at Princeton University.
George Richard Wilson Knight (1897–1985) was an English literary critic and academic, known particularly for his interpretation of mythic content in literature, and The Wheel of Fire, a collection of essays on Shakespeare's plays. He was also an actor and theatrical director, and considered an outstanding lecturer.
Timothy W. Ryback is a historian and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. He previously served as the Deputy-Secretary General of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, and Director and Vice President of the Salzburg Global Seminar. Prior to this, he was a lecturer in the Concentration of History and Literature at Harvard University. Ryback has a doctorate.
Obersalzberg is a mountainside retreat situated above the market town of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, Germany. Located about 120 kilometres (75 mi) south-east of Munich, close to the border with Austria, it is best known as the site of Adolf Hitler's former mountain residence, the Berghof, and of the mountaintop Kehlsteinhaus, popularly known in the English-speaking world as the "Eagle's Nest". All of the Nazi era buildings were demolished in the 1950s, but the relevant past of the area is the subject of the Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg museum, which opened in 1999.
Hans Friedrich Karl Günther was a German writer, an advocate of scientific racism and a eugenicist in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. He was also known as "Rassengünther" or "Rassenpapst". He is considered to have been a major influence on Nazi racialist thought.
Erich Heller was a British essayist, known particularly for his critical studies in German-language philosophy and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Martin Bodmer was a Swiss bibliophile, scholar and collector.
Nicholas Boyle FBA is an English literary critic. He is the emeritus Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He has written widely on German literature, intellectual history and religion and is known particularly for his award-winning extensive biography of Goethe. Boyle became a fellow of the British Academy in 2000.
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe was a German writer, who is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day. Goethe was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and color.
Rüdiger Safranski is a German philosopher and author.