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‘Parthenon’ made of books built at site of Nazi book burning

A Greek-style temple made out of banned books hopes to stir debate about censorship at the site of Nazi book burning in central Germany.

Published: 7 June 2017 09:12 CEST
'Parthenon' made of books built at site of Nazi book burning
"The Parthenon of Books" in Kassel. Photo: DPA.

It looks like the monumental temple standing imposingly at the Acropolis in Athens. But this replica in central Germany is not built with marble, but books that have been or remain banned.

“The Parthenon of Books” is the main showpiece at this year's Documenta – the cult contemporary art show held once every five years in the university town of Kassel.

The work by Argentine artist Marta Minujin is a plea against all forms of censorship.

Minujin, 74, a pop art icon in South America, has described it as “the most political” of her works.

In fact, the “Parthenon of Books” stands at the same site where, in 1933, Nazis set in flames books by Jewish or Marxist writers.

Fast forward eight decades and there is a team of volunteers wearing hard hats gathering at the foot of a crane, preparing to lift more books onto the installation.

In a few minutes, a copy of “The First Circle” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would find its place on one of the 46 columns formed by metal grills which are in turn covered with books.

The Russian writer's novel joins bestsellers including “The Bible”, “The Satanic Verses”, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Little Prince”. 

In all, 100,000 copies of 170 titles will cover the columns, each individually wrapped in a plastic bag to shield it from the capricious German weather.

“The work has exactly the same dimensions as the Parthenon – 70 metres (230 feet) in length, 31 metres in breadth and 10 metres in height,” one of Documenta's curators, Pierre Bal-Blanc, told AFP.

The Frenchman said the art installation at Friedrichsplatz also has a “slightly slanted orientation which gives a more impressive presence, because you get a side view of it rather than a frontal view.”

170 titles, 100,000 books

A close-up of the artwork being set up. Photo: DPA.

The showpiece's reference to ancient Greece is not pure chance.

This year's edition of Documenta, which attracted 905,000 people in 2012, is taking place simultaneously in another city – Athens.

Since April 8th, the Greek capital with its underground emerging art scene has been busy with the exhibitions, concerts, films and performances linked to Documenta.

And from June 10th, the show, known for rejecting commercialism in favour of the quirky and groundbreaking, returns to its birth place, Kassel, where it will feature works from 160 artists until September 17th.

Preparations for the “Parthenon of Books” began last year, when Minujin launched an appeal to collect up to 100,000 books.

Nineteen students at Kassel University had also helped to draw up an inventory of banned books, listing some 70,000 that span “the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago to apartheid South Africa,” said art historian Florian Gassner.

The process of picking which titles would be featured was at times complicated.

“In communist East Germany, there wasn't a list of banned books drawn up by the authorities,” said Gassner.

“What happened was that at the moment when a writer wanted to get his work published, suddenly there was no more paper for the job,” he said. 

Finally, Minujin and the Documenta team shortlisted 170 titles.

Handed out

Photo: DPA.

But what is perhaps Germany's most controversial work, banned in several countries, will not figure on the Parthenon – Adolf Hitler's “Mein Kampf”.

The book outlines Hitler's ideology that formed the basis for Nazism, but, like pornographic works, has been deliberately left out of the exhibition. 

Meanwhile, some art experts have also decried the key showpiece of this year's Documenta as a copy of a work that already exists.

In fact, some 34 years ago, after the fall of the Argentine junta, Minujin had already set up a similar installation of books to condemn censorship imposed by the military dictatorship.

In Kassel, Minujin will keep collecting copies of the banned titles until Documenta closes its doors.

After that, the books will be redistributed to the public.

The “Parthenon of Books” is “a monumental project but an immaterial one,” said Bal-Blanc. “It will disappear just as quickly as it has appeared.”

By Yannick Pasquet

For members

DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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