Excerpt

The delayed protest of the German clergy against bad taste and customs has been in vain even unto today. Barbarism has been victorious this year [early in 1933] from top to bottom. It has overtaken masters and servants and conquerors.
—Entlarvte Geschichte (Unmasked History), Werner Hegemann, 1933

Fire Oath

"Fire oaths" were statements to be read as books were tossed to the flames. The German Student Association sent out a circular containing these statements before the book burnings. The fire oaths then accompanied the burning of works written by the individual authors named in the statements.

Against the falsification of our history and disparagement of its great figures
For reverence for our past
Emil Ludwig, Werner Hegemann

Which of Werner Hegemann's Works were Burned?

Entlarvte Geschichte (Unmasked History), 1933.1

Who was Werner Hegemann?

The Nazis attacked ideas contrary to their own in all professions and pursuits. Werner Hegemann (1881-1936) was a prestigious city planner. He lived in the United States and did major work as a city planner as early as World War I, but returned to Berlin in 1924.

Hegemann had developed a theory of urban planning that was premised on social priorities in laying out a decentralized city. The transportation system in this decentralized city would have appropriated some large landed estates. Hegemann's works praising American architecture and his modest sketches of German historical figures that ran counter to the Nazis' worshipful biographies brought him to the attention of the Nazis. They deprived him of his German citizenship.

Hegemann immigrated to the United States via Czechoslovakia and became a professor of urban planning at Columbia University.