‘Origin’ Missed an Often Overlooked Bit Of Context During the Book Burning Scenes

In connecting racism to caste, Origin features a recreation of the largest book burnings conducted by the Nazis during Hitler’s regime. However, the movie, like many depictions before it, fails to make clear a key target of the most documented burning.

Ava DuVernay embarked on a monumental feat when she decided to adapt a film inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s bestseller Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The sociology book presents American racism through the lens of caste, with Wilkerson comparing the caste systems of India and Weimar/Nazi Germany. Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) sees these systems of oppression as connected, but can’t quite pin it down. The film frames her search as a mystery. We follow Wilkerson’s journey along with her familial struggles and personal tragedies over the decade she wrote Caste.

Minor spoilers ahead for Origin

The details of the connective tissue for Wilkerson’s caste thesis and its connection to her personal life is a lot to cover in a single movie. Obviously DuVernay had to navigate these topics sensitively while also allowing for edits to the film. However, in the scenes about German book burnings and the memorials that remain, the context left out is frustrating—in part because the omission remains a common issue in the flattening of antisemitism and Holocaust history. Also, because these expressions of fascism—like book banning (which includes Caste)—remain present in American society in the 2020s.

In Origin, three key stories take place in Germany. The film starts there with the story of August Landmesser, a member of the Nazi party defying Nuremberg laws when he falls in love with a Jewish woman. Later we see Wilkerson in Deutschland doing research, and the beginning of Allison and Elizabeth Davis’ story. It’s through those latter two stories that viewers see library censorship, a Nazi book burning, and Wilkerson make the connection between the systems of oppression in Germany and the Jim Crow South.

Books pulled from circulation

The bulk of the Davis’ story focuses on their anthropological work in the American South. However, in Origin their story starts in a Berlin library, where they’re struggling to find a copy of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front. (Now in the public domain as of January 1.) I’m not sure if this particular moment with the Davises actually happened. However, it does illustrate the anti-Black sentiment growing in Germany, the presence (and paranoia) of Nazi spies, and the book’s censorship in the country. While successful worldwide and even spawning two Academy Award-winning films, many Germans hated All Quiet on the Western Front.

Often referred to as “the greatest war novel of all time,” the book follows a young German man’s enlistment in the army during WWI. Many praise the story for its realism, its anti-military messaging, and its exposé on the treatment of veterans after war. Despite being a German veteran of WWI, some Germans thought Remarque’s depiction was an insult to the military and veterans. Like other novels soon banned, the Nazis labeled All Quiet as “degenerate” and “anti-German.” Infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels led a protest of the film, which turned into a riot. Within a week of the protest, German censors banned the film. In May 1933, Nazis burned Remarque’s book and he fled that year.

Against literary betrayal of the soldiers of the World War
For the education of the nation in the spirit of standing to battle
Erich Maria Remarque

Fire Oath recited by Nazis at the burning of All Quiet on the Western Front

Origin‘s depiction of the Davises’ trouble at the library and the book burning they later attend is an accurate representation of Nazi censorship. However, the film fails to mention the central target of the burning in that location.

The Empty Library in Origin

The Empty Library as seen in Origin is located in the public square of Berlin’s Bebelplatz. The installation represents the many materials lost from libraries and research institutions. The location was chosen because of a burning carried out there on May 1933. Designer Micha Ullman constructed the underground memorial to fit 20,000 books, representing the books lost at this spot that night. Here, Nazis raided and torched materials from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a.k.a. the Institute for Sexual Science (ISS). The first Nazi book burning deliberately targeted sex, sexuality, and transgender studies.

The ISS is one of the most important institutions for sex, sexuality, and gender research in history. The founder of the school, German-Jewish man Magnus Hirschfeld, would coin the word “transvestite” and write about sexuality being an “innate” trait for decades before Nazis rose to power. He and others associated with the school were frequently on the front page of Nazi magazines, and in March 1933, at least one school administrator (Kurt Hiller) was sent to a concentration camp. The first known patient of a male-to-female gender reassignment surgery, Dorchen Richter, was murdered when the school was stormed by Nazi paramilitary group the brownshirts, who stormed the school on May 6 for the Saturday night book burning.

Not only was this endorsed by political leaders, but the infamous Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, spoke at the ISS book burning to about 40,000 people. This book burning at ISS resulted in the loss of knowledge and documentation about sex, sexuality, and gender dating back at least to the 1800s […]

The Kind of Books Nazis Burned Is Super !@#$ing Relevant Right Now by Alyssa Shotwell (me)

With permission from the German government (Nazi imagery isn’t allowed in Germany), DuVernay recreated this scene at Bebelplatz. Both the book burning and the scene in which Wilkerson stands over the Empty Library in the 2010s are in the same plaza. It visually parallels to the Unite the Right rally in 2018 and white lynch mobs—both of which are mentioned in Origin.

The Nazi burnings, led by students and marketed as “Action against the Un-German Spirit,” took place in 34 university towns across the country. However, the Empty Library visited by Wilkerson and the Bebelplatz burning ceremony depicted in the film were targeting the ISS. DuVernay used this particular night to link the square with censorship and caste stratification. And yet, the history of the ISS is omitted.

Footnotes in Holocaust history

That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people.

Engraved on a plaque near the window (translated here) and from the 1821 play by Heinrich Heine, Almansor

Because antisemitic conspiracy theories link non-cis, non-hetero relationships to supposed Aryan replacement, it’s not like the film wholly undercuts LGBTQ+ history. I highly doubt DuVernay’s choice to omit this history was malicious or possibly even intentional. And I’m not just saying that because the film is led by two queer Black women (Ellis-Taylor and Niecy Nash Betts). DuVernay, who wrote and directed Origin, simply might not know that this moment was a devastating part of queer (especially trans) history.

While the Nazis killed millions of non-Jews, Jews were the single largest demographic massacred, with six million lives taken. Additionally, of the millions of non-Jews, many were targeted for their support of or connection (supposed or otherwise) to Jews. This often makes others—including the Romani, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Black people, ethnic Poles, the LBGTQ+ community, and more—footnotes in Holocaust history. Sometimes they’re not even mentioned. Limited categorization complicates records because of the intersecting identities hated by the Nazis—for example: disabled Jews, gay Black people, or Polish dissidents. Like Caste and Origin emphasize, systems of oppression are linked.

If DuVernay knew about the ISS and left it out, I’m sure that it’s because of how packed the narrative already was. After all, it’s the biggest issue with critics right now. (Not from me, though.) Additionally, Origin and the book it’s based on were created in part to serve as a starting point. DuVernay and many in the film’s cast have talked about reading the book and learning historical events for the first time. Caste is a springboard to learn more and rebel against and uproot the caste system.

Authors note: Throughout, I refer to “Nazi” as a blanket identifier encompassing the different factions of National Socialist German Workers’ Party. I used the word to include the Brown Shirts, Nazi German Student Association, Schutzstaffel (SS), National Socialist German Students’ League, military members during the Third Reich, etc.

(featured image: Neon)

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