Reich Chamber of Literature
nazi organization
The Reich Chamber of Literature (Reichsschrifttumskammer) was a government agency of Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. It was one of several chambers belonging to the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer) overseen by Joseph Goebbels and the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. The Chamber's primary purpose was to regulate the publishing, distribution, and censorship of all literature within Germany and its occupied territories. Additionally, it promoted and advertised literature that was seen as useful for the implementation of Nazi ideology. Its jurisdiction was absolute, and extended not only to libraries, publishing houses, and literary agencies, but also to individuals and the private composition of written work.
History
The Reich Chamber of Literature was established on 1 November 1933 as part of the First Ordinance Implementing the Reich Chamber of Culture Act. This was after its parent body, the Reich Chamber of Culture, was founded on 22 September. The agency was created at the instigation of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, for the reported sole purpose of, as defined in the Manual of the Reich Chamber of Culture, to keep 'the profession [of literature] free from undesirable elements and the book market free from un-German books'.
The Chamber was founded on a number of professional associations that had been absorbed as part of the Nazi's coordination and consolidation process (Gleichschaltung). These included the Reich Association of German Writers (RDS), the Germans Booksellers' Association (BDB), the Association of German Librarians (VDB), the Association of German People's Librarians (VDV), and the Society of Bibliophiles.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reich Chamber of Literature” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.