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125 reviews for:
Bedrohte Bücher: Eine Geschichte der Zerstörung und Bewahrung des Wissens
Richard Ovenden
3.68 AVERAGE
125 reviews for:
Bedrohte Bücher: Eine Geschichte der Zerstörung und Bewahrung des Wissens
Richard Ovenden
3.68 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
Timely read of this book on the power of libraries and archives via the regular assaults on their existence
informative
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
informative
tense
medium-paced
I thought this would focus a bit more on topics like book banning (historic and modern) and the implications, and this focused more on archives. With that said it was interesting and comprehensive
A few months ago the author, Jeanette Winterson made quite an impact when she burned a number of copies of her books because as she said: Absolutely hated the cosy little domestic blurbs on my new covers. Turned me into wimmins fiction of the worst kind! Whether it was a genuine protest against what the publisher had done to her books or a publicity stunt it had quite an effect.
The act of burning books and destruction of libraries has always been seen as an act of violence or oppression against a particular sector of people. The act is not recent though as it has been going on over the past 3000 years. In a lot of the cases, the aim has been of the victors to eradicate the histories of the people that they have just conquered.
Sadly this is not an ancient phenomenon. And there have been many instances of this happening even in the past century. Probably the best known is the horrors that the Nazi’s inflicted on the Jewish populations. The books burnings and eradication of their common European histories began in their own country and would be similar to the places that they invaded.
In this book, Richard Ovenden takes us through several notable historical events from the war in Bosnia, the way that the Jewish communities went about saving as much of their literature as they could from those that wanted to eradicate them as well as authors such as Kafta and Byron who specifically asked for their works to be destroyed and what those responsible did to them. It is bang up to date too, considering what we have to do as a global society to keep records of the vast quantities of websites that are created all the time.
It is the duty of the present to convey the voices of the past to the ears of the future. – A Norwegian saying
I thought this was an interesting book about the way that countries and nations have sought to dominate and write history from their own perspective. Ovenden’s prose is occasionally a bit dry and academic but there are parts of this that are very readable. It is also a warning that we discard our collective histories at our peril, that these hold the key to our future.
The act of burning books and destruction of libraries has always been seen as an act of violence or oppression against a particular sector of people. The act is not recent though as it has been going on over the past 3000 years. In a lot of the cases, the aim has been of the victors to eradicate the histories of the people that they have just conquered.
Sadly this is not an ancient phenomenon. And there have been many instances of this happening even in the past century. Probably the best known is the horrors that the Nazi’s inflicted on the Jewish populations. The books burnings and eradication of their common European histories began in their own country and would be similar to the places that they invaded.
In this book, Richard Ovenden takes us through several notable historical events from the war in Bosnia, the way that the Jewish communities went about saving as much of their literature as they could from those that wanted to eradicate them as well as authors such as Kafta and Byron who specifically asked for their works to be destroyed and what those responsible did to them. It is bang up to date too, considering what we have to do as a global society to keep records of the vast quantities of websites that are created all the time.
It is the duty of the present to convey the voices of the past to the ears of the future. – A Norwegian saying
I thought this was an interesting book about the way that countries and nations have sought to dominate and write history from their own perspective. Ovenden’s prose is occasionally a bit dry and academic but there are parts of this that are very readable. It is also a warning that we discard our collective histories at our peril, that these hold the key to our future.
What a wonderful book, skillfully guiding me through Mesopotamia, Nazi Germany, East Germany, Iraq and more!!
informative
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
The title drew me in, but it wasn't about what I was anticipating. There's a lot of focus on academic and national libraries (especially the constant name dropping of the Bodleian) and their archives. While important, it wasn't what I was looking for.
I do not recommend the audiobook. You can hear all of the narrator's mouth noises and even the page turning while he's reading. It was painful to get through.
I do not recommend the audiobook. You can hear all of the narrator's mouth noises and even the page turning while he's reading. It was painful to get through.
Ovenden's prose is workmanlike but the information is SO important, and the overall plea for society to recognize the significance of libraries, archives, and information preservation is conveyed with obvious fervency. And I agree! Fund libraries!
A few special mentions:
- "Sarajevo Mon Amour," the chapter on the targeted destruction of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Serbian militia in 1992. It honestly brought me to tears.
- Sir Thomas Bodley, who (re)founded the Bodleian library, and disinherited his own family in order to endow it. A tip of the hat to you, sir.
- Ted Hughes. I have always felt that he was kind of the worst, and this book did not convince me otherwise. Team Sylvia Plath allllll the way.
Oh, I forgot to add one critical comment: even though the book did delve into the issues of "migrated archives" and other situations where items pertinent to a particular state or culture's selfhood are removed to a different state (possibly in perpetuity), I found Ovenden's commentary on Britain's role in this area to be unsatisfying in the extreme. As the head of the Bodleian, it is possible that he needed to choose his words with care, but avoiding that more critical lens on his own library's holdings still felt like an uncomfortable gap in the narrative, given Britain's role on the world stage as major empire builder and its known activities of appropriation.
A few special mentions:
- "Sarajevo Mon Amour," the chapter on the targeted destruction of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Serbian militia in 1992. It honestly brought me to tears.
- Sir Thomas Bodley, who (re)founded the Bodleian library, and disinherited his own family in order to endow it. A tip of the hat to you, sir.
- Ted Hughes. I have always felt that he was kind of the worst, and this book did not convince me otherwise. Team Sylvia Plath allllll the way.
Oh, I forgot to add one critical comment: even though the book did delve into the issues of "migrated archives" and other situations where items pertinent to a particular state or culture's selfhood are removed to a different state (possibly in perpetuity), I found Ovenden's commentary on Britain's role in this area to be unsatisfying in the extreme. As the head of the Bodleian, it is possible that he needed to choose his words with care, but avoiding that more critical lens on his own library's holdings still felt like an uncomfortable gap in the narrative, given Britain's role on the world stage as major empire builder and its known activities of appropriation.
There is something terrible about those who burn books. To kill someone is to remove them from the present, to burn their books is to eradicate them from the past and to deny them to the future. The Nazi's did not just massacre European Jewry, they sought to destroy their culture and their history so that it could be forgotten and never resurrected.
There are many reasons to destroy documents. It is remarkable that in such a slim volume Ovenden covers so many of them. Sometimes it is politics, The British burned the Library of Congress to strike a blow at the young United States, the Germans burned the University Library at Louvain (twice) to assert their dominance over a conquered people. Henry VIII destroyed the monastic libraries of England out of a mixture of religious fervour and greed. Sometimes, as in the case of the Nazi's or the Serbian forces at Sarajevo, it is simply hatred. More benignly, as was recently the case with the Windrush landing cards in the UK, it is just bureaucratic malfeasance.
Yet this book is not just a litany of loss and destruction, (Although, how great would it be to read the missing verses of Sappho or the lost novel of Kafka!) it also raises interesting questions. To what extent should the author control their work? Was Betty Mackereth right to accede to Philip Larkin's request to shed his diaries, or was Max Brod right to ignore Kafka's demand that all his work be burned? When should we destroy records which reflect poorly on the living as Ted Hughes did of Sylvia Plath's journals and Jon Murray did with Byron's autobiography?
There are also questions for our modern era. How do we deal with the deluge of digital information? And should we allow Facebook and Google to become default archivists of our time?
What and how we record for posterity matters, whether is commentaries on the gospels or a list of passengers on a ship and for raising these issues this excellent little book is worth reading.
There are many reasons to destroy documents. It is remarkable that in such a slim volume Ovenden covers so many of them. Sometimes it is politics, The British burned the Library of Congress to strike a blow at the young United States, the Germans burned the University Library at Louvain (twice) to assert their dominance over a conquered people. Henry VIII destroyed the monastic libraries of England out of a mixture of religious fervour and greed. Sometimes, as in the case of the Nazi's or the Serbian forces at Sarajevo, it is simply hatred. More benignly, as was recently the case with the Windrush landing cards in the UK, it is just bureaucratic malfeasance.
Yet this book is not just a litany of loss and destruction, (Although, how great would it be to read the missing verses of Sappho or the lost novel of Kafka!) it also raises interesting questions. To what extent should the author control their work? Was Betty Mackereth right to accede to Philip Larkin's request to shed his diaries, or was Max Brod right to ignore Kafka's demand that all his work be burned? When should we destroy records which reflect poorly on the living as Ted Hughes did of Sylvia Plath's journals and Jon Murray did with Byron's autobiography?
There are also questions for our modern era. How do we deal with the deluge of digital information? And should we allow Facebook and Google to become default archivists of our time?
What and how we record for posterity matters, whether is commentaries on the gospels or a list of passengers on a ship and for raising these issues this excellent little book is worth reading.