99% Invisible - 203- The Giftschrank

Episode Date: March 9, 2016

Centuries ago, Germany came up with a way to keep books that contained “dangerous” information without releasing them to the general public: The Giftschrank. The word, a combination of “poison�� and “cabinet,” has a variety of meanings in different contexts. … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. On May 8, 1945, the Allied powers declared victory in Europe, putting an end to the Nazi regime. President Truman addressed the nation. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations, much remains to be done. There was a lot to be done, rebuilding Europe, setting up a provisional government, and getting Germany to be less, well, not see-ish. Our producer, Sam Green's man, is just back from Deutschland. And to that end, there was one thing the Americans and the British and the French and the Russians

all wanted out of Germany. It was a book. Mein Kampf, or Mein Struggle, was Adolf Hitler's fictionalized autobiography. Then in it he outlines his political ideology and plans for Germany's future. It's a synthesis of his hatred for Jews and other groups and it was everywhere. The whole number of sold copies of Mein Kampf, only in Germany, at the end of World War II, was 12.45 million, and around one million copies in many, many different editions and translations in other languages. This is Sven Felix Kellerhoff, a journalist and author of a book about Mein Kampf. He says that according to one survey after the war, Every fifth German 105, half-ret Mein Kampf,

Mein Kampf was given out to people when they joined the Nazi Party. And in some cities, the government would even give it as a wedding gift. It gives a copy to fresh married couples. as a wedding gift. As World War II drew to a close, a lot of Germans threw away or burned their copies of Mein Kampf. No one wanted to look like a Nazi to the Occupy in armies. Still, the Allies felt the need to ban the book. The Allies, especially the American military government, made in law in fall of 45, which banned Nazi Party itself, and also this law banned a minecomp. Now minecomp was only banned outright for a few years. After all, the third Reich had been infamous for censorship and banning books, and the

last thing the new German Republic wanted was to look like Nazis. Hitler's intellectual property, including Mein Kampf, was ultimately given to the government of Bavaria, the state and southern Germany where Hitler rose to power. And the Bavarian government decided that as the copyright owners, they would not publish any new German editions of Mein Kampf, and they would seek to limit and control who had access to the book, that way they could make sure it was used only for scholarship and not in an attempt to revive fascism.

And it just so happened that Germany had the perfect tool for the jobs. Something to help them deal with sensitive information that's neither censorship nor open access. The gift shrunk. Oh, this is the room? So we're in the gift shrunk? Gift shrunk. Gift meaning poison, shrunk meaning case or cupboard covered, or cabinet, a poison cabinet,

or in this case, a room in the basement of the Bavarian State Library. The word gift shrunk can actually mean a few different things. In a pharmacy, it's a place for keeping controlled substances. But one of the oldest usages of this word, going back hundreds of years, is a gift shrunk of a library. A box or place to lock away materials deemed unfit for the public.

These materials were set aside not so much to protect them from people, but to protect people from them. Little biohazard zones for information. Over the course of centuries, these poison cabinets and German libraries have emptied and filled up, emptied again and filled up again. Their contents speaking volumes about what German society considers dangerous at any given moment. You can read the Giftschrank as a cultural history of morality of behavior. That's Stefan Kellner, a staff historian at the Bavarian State Library

and author of a book about its Giftsrank. The name of my book is Der Giftsrank, erotic, sexual, Wissenschaft, Politik und Literatur, die weggesperrten Bücher der Bayerischen Staatsbültung. The Giftsrank, paradox, sexuality, politics and literature, hidden books of the Bavarian State Library. This story begins in this library shortly after the foundation in the 16th century. At this time, in the 1580s, Bavaria was a kingdom inside of the Holy Roman Empire, which didn't want the public reading works that they considered heretical. They put aside authors like Martin Luther and Galileo.

Even some Catholic authors which were not okay for the Catholic Church. But while these anti-clarical writings may have been prohibited, the powers that be didn't just round up all the copies they could find and burn them, they thought it would be good to hold on to them. You have better arguments if you know what the other side thinks. At the order of the Duke of Bavaria, the library took all the forbidden literature and put it in a locked box and called it, the Dye Giff Trank, the Poison Cabinet. The box contained about 500 works opposed by the Catholic Church, which were kept around only as a means of reference for those working to oppose the people

who opposed the Church. And they may not be used without permission of the Duke of Bavaria. But over time, the Catholic Church's grip over Europe got weaker. By the 1800s, the Gifts' ronks of German libraries were less concerned with protecting us from the Protestant writings of Martin Luther and more concerned with protecting us from sex. And this came to the fore when the King of the Varia acquired a private collection of books that had belonged to a guy named von Krenner. Franz von Krenner.

And the King wanted the library to house Franz von Krenner's collection, which was an assortment of books for adults. Books concerning love in all perspectives. Maki does sad, of course, and something about whipping and so on, which was whipping. People who like to be whipped and okay. Unwilling to throw these controversial books out and unwilling to make them readily available, librarians found a home for von Krenner's Arotica collection in the Giftsrunk, and they were very serious about keeping its contents secure. There were two keys, and only if they were to get it, they could open the Giftsrunk.

It's like a nuclear launch. Yes. And some people believe that the books inside the gift shrunk were so dangerous that they could literally make you sick. There was one librarian at the time who got crazy, Joseph Shira. And he got mentally ill. And after he was in the hospital, his friend went to his room, opened the cupboard, saw many of Krenner's books inside and said, I think that must have been the reason for his illness. Time passed, Germany fought and lost World War I, and from the rubble of that defeat grew

a liberal counterculture. Dada is proclaimed that art was dead, expressionist films explored the darkness of the soul. Berliners passed late hours at Cabaret's, nudist's challenge traditional modesty. Berlin in 1920, it was sent off all forms of different life experiments. And at the center of all this was a physician named Magnus Hershfeld. And he founded an institute for all those people who had another sexual orientation than usual. Hershfeld also promoted acceptance of transgenderism, SDD prevention, contraception, and women's emancipation. He wrote that. The woman who needs to be liberated most is the woman in every man, and the man who needs to

be liberated most is the man in every woman. But this liberal renaissance in Berlin would not last for long. As the Nazi party rose to power, Hirschfeldt's Institute for Sexual Sciences had become a target. Magnus Hirschfeldt was very famous at this time. He was gay. He was a Jew and he was leftist. In May of 1933, the German Student Union, a group affiliated with the Nazis, rated Magnus Hirschfeldt's Institute. They threw many of his books onto the street and burned them.

This was four days before Nazis all across Germany started burning books by Jewish authors in public rallies. But even so, the new regime didn't get rid of everything. The very inside the library they said we have to keep them because we have to know what the enemy writes and to fight with him. So of course Magnus Hirschfeldt's books went into the gift shrunk. 12 years later, in 1945, the Nazis had lost the war, and now their own literature, including of course Mein Kampf, was thrown into the gift shrunk. The hope was to de-nautify Germany and build a new society. But Germany did not become a new society. It became two new societies. As the communist barrier between East and West Berlin

grows higher and stronger, the more determined grows the will of those in the East to escape. Along the border, East Berliners are forced to evacuate their homes, as the communist police moved to prevent their escape. The two Germany's would eventually each have their own government, their own culture, and of course, their own libraries. And the contents of each side's gift shrunk became a mirror for what was deemed dangerous in East and West.

So the Nazi stuff, mine comps and the writings of Joseph Gebbels and Alfred Rosenberg, this could be found in gift shrunks in both West and East Germany. But while West Germany actually thinned out their gift shrunk over time, allowing more access to so-called pernicious information, in East Germany it was the opposite. East Germany was a dictatorship so there was like a very obvious and strict censorship, Western print material wasn't normally accessible. This is Elena Demko. While she was a student at university, she was looking to read some band Czech poetry. And with the help of an idealistic professor, she was able to get access to the room

where the university library kept its band material. While the nickname was Gif Trom, library kept its band material. Well the nickname was Gif Traum, Poison Room. I would remember being really nervous and excited when I went there. It's a very big, representative 19th century building. So you have to go to the major staircase and you go up major stakers. And keep going up. Then there's smaller stakers and you go up's smaller staircase, we go up a smaller staircase. Until you reach a spiral staircase. You had to climb up a spiral staircase and all of a sudden

he was standing front of a bunker door. It was made of iron and it had a big circular glass window, made of very thick glass and it had two huge bars which you had to push down at the same time in order to open the door. Past the bunker door was a dark room. A stern looking lady checked to see if your name was on a list. Then she got your book and let you go through another door. And then you went into the small reading room which which was a little glass dome, so it was a very light, a very pleasant, sunny place.

In East Germany, the Giftschrank had become a place you could visit. And in this library, at the University of Leipzig, the Giftschrank was actually a pretty lovely place to be. Was the best reading room in the house actually? You kinda see where people were reading? Of course I was. Elena had been hoping to meet other counter-culture types, who were also there to read politically conscious literature.

I was disappointed realizing that the other people were not reading politically relevant literature, and when I saw, you know, pretty students reading fashion literature I thought okay she chatted up her professor to get access to the Poison Room to read fashion magazines from the West. Within about a year of Elena visiting the Poison Room, the East German government had collapsed, the border was opened, and Germany was reunified. All across the former East Giff Schrank's shr, literature critical of the East German government, magazines that showed life in a capitalist society, they were taken out from

behind iron bunker doors and returned to normal circulation. Today the physical rooms and cabinets that once served as Giff Shrunkunks all across Germany are mostly empty. Their contents returned to the regular stacks, but not everything. Today, Mein Kampf is kept in what Stefan Kälner calls, a virtual gift shrunk. Meaning, there's no physical box or even a particular room, coordinating off the books from the user. Rather, the library relies on the infrastructure of their catalog and checkout system to create a series of checkpoints between the user and books that the library wants to keep an eye

on. When you search for mine comp in the database, you can't just order it. You have to go see Susie. You know, my comp was pretty busy with the card. I can say English. A little bit. Susie Coolbeck was the librarian on the desk that day. And she said the first thing to do

First I want you to go to our chief to have the permission to land it and as long as you don't seem like a Nazi You can get a copy of mine comp no problem the process of accessing mine comp from the Bavarian State Library should feel pretty familiar to anyone Who's ever gotten material from an academic library. But if you're underage... Under 18, they need the signature from the parents. You dress like a god. If he has a Gothic costume, you know? Well, good luck getting through Suzy. Yeah. If someone says I want to get this book because I want to learn how to be a Nazi...

No, no, that comes to no. Though if you do go through the trouble of checking out Mein Kampf, just don't go in expecting too much. I read it, it's boring. It's really funny. It's really... These days, of course, you don't need a library to read Mein Kampf in Germany. It's not hard to find a copy at an antiquarian bookstore and the text has been on the internet for at least a decade. Of course you can get Nazi literature in the internet and so on.

But even if the book is readily available on the internet, Stefan Kellner says the library still has a responsibility to try to control who reads their copies and for what purpose. Even if it's a bit anachronistic we have to be a little careful, not a little, we have to be careful with this part of our library. And now for the first time since Hitler was in power, new copies of Mein Kampf are on sale in Germany. On January 1, 2016, the copyright of Mein Kampf expired, which means this book is now in the public domain. The Institute for Contemporary History in Munich has just published a new critical edition of Mind Comp.

This edition is big, it's heavy, it's expensive, it's two volumes with 1500 pages of footnotes and commentary meant to disprove and contextualize all of Hitler's claims. notes in commentary, meant to disprove and contextualize all of Hitler's claims. There's no way you can mistake it as anything other than serious scholarship. It makes you work through layers and layers of critique in order to get to Hitler's writing. It's almost as if the publishers wrapped a gift shrunk around the new addition of mind comp so that the world would be inoculated from its poison. 99% Invisible Was Produced As Weeked by Sam Greenspan With Katie Mingle, Avery Trouffman, Delaney Hall, Kurt Colstead, Sharif Yusef, and me Roman

Mars. We have so many people to thank this week, many of whom have names I cannot pronounce, so I have Sam to do it. Thank you to Tobias Kolp, Wilhelm Hilpert, and Peter Schitzlein at the Bavarian State Library, Magnus Brechtkin and Simone Paul Mikoel at the Center for Contemporary History in Munich, Sarah Borey, Andre Kraber, Romy Kuneert, Luisa Beck, Pat McCD Miller, Ulf Schveckendijk, Daniel Wetzel, Ziegfried Locatus, Bernd Florat, Dagmar Huvistate, Michelle Krasowski, and Jeremy Ott.

Thank you one and all. Thanks also to Okakumi and Melodium for providing some of the music this week. We'll have a full list on the website. We are a production of 99% Invisible Ink, a project of KL-91.7 in San Francisco, and produced under the offices of Arxine, an architecture in interiors for imbeutable downtown, Oakland, California. You can find this show and join the fine community of people who would like this show on Facebook. I love seeing all the 99pi coins showing up on Twitter and Instagram, but if you want to explore the 99% Invisible activity that shapes the design of our world, I recommend

you spend some time with 99PI. dot org. Thanks.