Georg Bernhard

Excerpt

To the Seven Wonders of the World an eighth has joined in: Hitler's Germany. A relapse into medieval times yet simultaneously something unprecedented that can hardly be compared to anything else.
—Die deutsche Tragödie: Der Selbstmord einer Republik (The German Tragedy: The Suicide of a Republic), Georg Bernhard, 1933

Fire Oath

Photo

Nazi propaganda depicting prominent Jewish figures (Photo)

Nazi-produced propaganda slide entitled "Leading Figures of the System." The image was presented during a lecture called "Jewry, Its Blood-based Essence in Past and Future," Part I in a series on Jewry, Freemasonry, and Bolshevism. Germany, circa 1936.

The slide features the portraits of six prominent Jewish political and cultural figures in Weimar Germany. Georg Bernhard, Rudolf Hilferding, and Walther Rathenau were among the authors whose works were targeted during the 1933 Nazi book burnings.

Credits:

• Library of Congress

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"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 democratic-Jewish character of journalism alien to the nation
For responsible collaboration on the work of national construction
Theodor Wolff and Georg Bernhard

Who was Georg Bernhard?

Georg Bernhard (1875-1944), born in Berlin, was a prominent financial columnist, newspaper editor, and director of the prestigious Ullstein publishing house. From 1913, he was editor-in-chief of the Vossische Zeitung of Berlin. He wrote mostly about economic and financial news and issues. He was elected to the German parliament as a member of the German Democratic Party and was also active in Jewish community groups.

Because the Nazis declared that the ranks of German journalists must be "cleansed" of Jews, Bernhard fled to Paris via Copenhagen in 1933 before the book burning. In Paris he contributed to and edited the liberal exile journal Pariser Tageblatt. Bernard was interned after the German invasion of France, but was able to flee to the United States in 1941.