Although I was born and grew up in Germany, I am still learning about Germany in another country. The memorial from Berlin, which represents an empty bookshelf and serves as a symbol for the burned books from the Nazi era, has remained in my thoughts ever since. Were only sheets of paper with signs burned back then or were identities of individuals destroyed?

Reading “Book History” by Levy and Mole, I quickly realized that books not only convey certain content, but are also material objects with a history.  When someone asks me what a book is, I don’t know how to answer the question. To be honest, I never thought about it. I saw the book as a book. I didn’t have an answer to the question. Since attending our course, I realize that a book is more than just sheets of paper stapled together to convey knowledge. Rather, they are created, distributed, read and can be destroyed. The memorial on Bebelplatz shows this aspect: books are fragile, vulnerable and mortal. This raises the question of what it means when books are destroyed? Is it only the destruction of an object or also of ideas?

It can be argued that books can be destroyed as objects, but not ideas, because these can be reproduced through reviews, copies and new editions. It depends more on how many people have read, distributed and studied the book. The idea that ideas and identities can be erased by burning books therefore proved to be wrong. Books as objects are perishable, but knowledge can have a different permanence. On the one hand, books are mortal because they consist only of paper and ink. On the other hand, they are immortal because their contents remain in the mind and are copied. The burnings rather refer to the fact that such books are usually destroyed because they are significant. 

In relation to the present day, this view is also significant. In the age of artificial intelligence, we realize that texts are not physical objects. Unlike the destruction of books, digital texts often disappear unnoticed from digital archives. This raises the question of whether digital books are more durable than printed ones or whether they are just as vulnerable.

The memorial is a reminder of what was destroyed. The transience of objects meets the permanence of knowledge. Although history as an object is destroyed, new stories are produced as a result. I also see the memorial as history. When I am back in Germany and visit Berlin, I will definitely take a look at the memorial and hopefully be able to answer the question of what a book finally is.