Deleting the Right: A Digital Book-Burning in Berlin

In Berlin’s Charlottenburg district, there is an unusual library. The Library of Conservatism (Bibliothek des Konservatismus or BdK) was founded in 2012, based on Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing’s extensive private collection of right-wing and libertarian non-fiction books. Today, it has a catalogue of roughly 35,000 titles from German and European writers—including early prints from authors such as Roger Scruton, Edmund Burke, Ernst Jünger, and Carl Schmitt. 

Soon, though, none of these titles will be accessible to many German academics and researchers. Without any explanation, the BdK is being thrown out of the Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (GBV), one of the largest library networks in the country. The library will be made functionally invisible. Library director Wolfgang Fenske, speaking to Junge Freiheit, described this as “an existential threat,” explaining that the BdK cannot store data and create its own searchable catalogue: 

Above a certain size, virtually all academic libraries are affiliated with a library network. This network maintains a kind of master data record for each book title. Every library that holds a book in the relevant edition attaches its local data record—which includes, among other things, the book’s call number—to this master data record of the library network. 

Fenske stressed that, until the library was handed the termination notice this summer, relations with the GBV were perfectly cordial. He believes, however, that this sudden decision to sever ties with the BdK could be the decision of the GBV’s new director, Regine Stein, who was appointed last October. Given the BdK’s right-wing stance, it is not unreasonable to suspect that a political motive was at play here. 

The BdK is not just a library, but also an integral part of Germany’s conservative scene. It hosts talks and events, has its own podcast, and conducts research. And, unlike many left-wing organisations, it achieves all this while being completely privately funded. “We place great importance on being independent from the state, individual parties, or donors,” Fenske told Junge Freiheit. But clearly, even private funding won’t save right-wing enterprises from the cancel culture that still pervades Germany, particularly in academic circles. 

According to a new survey, published this week, a significant portion of German students remain comfortable with deplatforming people whose ideas they disagree with. In particular, one in five said they would be willing to restrict speech for positions labelled “conservative,” far more than left-leaning ones. Right-wing views are still considered ‘dangerous’ for many German students, and therefore viewed as fair game when it comes to shutting down talks, firing professors, or getting fellow students expelled. Like the BdK, right-wing and conservative ideas must be quarantined and hidden away from public view, lest they breach containment and ‘infect’ the wider population. 

We see this all the time on university campuses, where rigorous debate has been smothered by an obsession with keeping students ‘safe.’ Back in 2022, Humboldt University in Berlin cancelled a lecture by biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht on why, in biological terms, there are only two sexes, after activists denounced her as “transphobic” and threatened protests. The talk was dropped from the “Long Night of Science” programme on security grounds—the university did not feel it could provide adequate safety measures in light of the planned demonstrations, both for and against Vollbrecht’s talk. She was silenced not because her ideas were unscientific or unlawful, but because some students were offended by them. The talk was thankfully rescheduled, but the university had to employ security checks.  

Or look at the case of political scientist Ulrike Guérot. In 2023, the University of Bonn sacked her, ostensibly over claims of plagiarism. But it is hard to ignore the fact that Guérot was also an outspoken critic of Germany’s COVID-19 restrictions and has made arguments against Western aid in prolonging the war in Ukraine. She believes that her firing was motivated by her controversial positions on the topics, and has argued that it was “legally, as well as politically dubious.” From the university’s perspective, a plagiarism scandal would certainly have been a convenient excuse to get rid of a politically controversial academic.

Since Hamas’s massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, Zionist or Israeli academics are now the target for many on-campus cancellations. At Leipzig University in 2024, a planned lecture by the Israeli historian Benny Morris, titled “The 1948 War and Jihad” and organised as part of a series on antisemitism, was abruptly dropped after student groups denounced him as a racist and threatened protests. The university cancelled the talks on security grounds, as students led protests against Morris’s presence on campus. Of course, there have been instances of deplatforming on the pro-Palestine side, too—LMU Munich cancelled a lecture by UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and the University of Bremen banned a talk by the Israeli-born anti-Zionist psychoanalyst Iris Hefets. This is a worrying sign that the appetite for debate is diminishing on all sides. 

This is why the cancellation of the Library of Conservatism is not surprising. It follows a broader trend, in which certain ideas—almost always from the Right—are treated not as arguments to be refuted, but as poison to be contained. It is not possible, in the eyes of many on the Left, to allow conservative views simply to exist in the marketplace of ideas, to be tested by debate and reality. They must instead be hidden away, in case the ignorant and uninformed public succumb to them. 

In many ways, though, scrubbing BdK’s titles from the catalogue is actually more chilling than silencing individual academics and speakers. It is a kind of modern-day book-burning—except now, it is easier than ever to make authors and ideas disappear. It is no longer necessary to pile volumes high and light an actual, physical fire. Someone simply has to flick a switch somewhere, and centuries of knowledge can be made invisible in the blink of an eye. You don’t have to agree with a single word on the shelves of the BdK to realise what a terrifying turn of events this is. Germany’s intellectual life is in grave danger.