Anna Seghers’ name was on the “Black List” of persecuted writers when Nazi students burned books on Berlin’s Opernplatz. Fourteen years later Seghers gave a speech to commemorate the book burning on the first “Free Book Day” at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She had returned from emigration just a few weeks previously. From that time in exile she was already familiar with the idea of transforming the memory of the book burning into a “Free Book Day”. In May 1934, for example, the Deutsche Freiheitsbibliothek (German Freedom Library) opened in Paris while the publishing house El Libro Libre was established in Mexico City in 1942, on the 9th anniversary of the book burning.

Fellow speaker Alfred Kantorowicz, who joined Anna Seghers at the brick lectern to address students, children and other Berliners, recalled later that it was one of the few events in the divided city which attracted the unanimous support of numerous organisations. It was considered a “sensation” that the co-signatories not only included Soviet sector broadcaster Berliner Rundfunk, but also Nordwestdeutsche Rundfunk and the RIAS (Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor, or Broadcasters in the American Sector) from the West. “On this occasion Berliners were united – the positive coverage in the newspapers, which were mutually antagonistic on just about every other issue, proved it.” The event was even attended by school classes from East and West (Pankow and Zehlendorf respectively). But by the autumn political mistrust and the East-West controversy had spread throughout the city.